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Hey everyone! We have reached another round of Worlds competition following another gold medal in the Americas tournament. A quick summary of the playoffs last season as I did not make a final post in last season's thread: we won the final by about 40 points, so it was pure dominance all the way through. Not much to add other than it is time to focus on Worlds!

Our schedule has been released and we have been matched up with the following opponents in this order: Egypt, Philippines, Israel, Serbia, Spain, Brazil and Finland. This is our first season with this new Worlds format so it is going to be an interesting season to see how everything plays out. We have a scrimmage on Monday against Australia to get some game action in before the games that count start, so looking forward to that on Monday!

Our first game as mentioned above is against Egypt. Egypt is coming off of an incredible Africas championship, going 10-0 in the regular season and winning the gold medal game by 21 points against Senegal. This is the first time that I will be facing up against Egypt, it is going to be fun to match up against a new opponent I have not encountered yet. They are certainly not a walkover team, no one in this new format will be, so we are going to come out with the fire and kick this Worlds campaign off with a bang!

Go USA!

United States 110-81 Egypt

What a great way to start of our Worlds season with a convincing 29 point victory against Egypt. Egypt came into this game putting more effort than us, when I first saw that I was unsure how the game was going to play out. I was still very confident we were going to win the game but thought there was a chance it might get fairly close. They played a good game until we got to the 4th quarter, but then our bench completely took over the game, scoring 36 points and more than doubling the margin in that quarter alone. Rufo Celanova was the star of the show having himself a 30 point game on 12-20 shooting, and he even added on 8 rebounds. The team as a whole shot .500, and a little above that from the 3 point line. It was a clean and impressive first win and it feels great to get off to a nice start to the season.

Our week 2 matchup is with Philippines. The Philippines are 1-0 coming off of a very nice win against Serbia in their opening match. They had a good game plan, hitting on both of their guesses while also avoiding Serbia's guess against them. This was enough to propel them to the 6 point win so they are clearly well coached. They are headed by a strong looking 63k salaried center, who has a really nice supporting cast around him. This will be a heck of a week 2 game and we will need to come out strong.

Go USA!

United States 83-78 Philippines

These last 2 weeks were a pair of very close games, with the first being a 5 point win against the Philippines. Philippines had a very nice guess that connected on our attack, which made this game much closer than it needed to be. Our defense ended up being the catapult that launched us into victory, but one shining star on the offensive end was McNair, who concluded this game on 9-14 shooting with 25 points, 8 rebounds and 5 assists. The defense held them to just 30% from the field and 78 points and we outrebounded them by 13.

United States 94-88 Israel

This game was a series of runs, and we ultimately came out on top. We were sitting comfortable at the start of the 2nd quarter with a double digit lead, until Israel went on a 4 minute run where they shot 10/10 scoring 23 points to take the lead. We ended up being down 4 at half. The team started out on a hot 8-0 run to start the 2nd half and carried that momentum all the way until the end of the game. I got a little nervous in the final minute, with 50 seconds left we were up 13 and a blinked and next thing I knew we were only up 5. Team held strong though and secured the 6 point win.

We match up with Serbia in our week 4 game. Serbia sits at 0-3 in the group and are coming off of a 18 point loss to Spain earlier today. They are going to come out hot looking for their first win in the group so we will need to make sure that we are ready and do not come out slow.

Go USA!

Good luck going for the gold! Looks like it will be quite a challenge.

Thank you!!

Yes, it will be a tough battle. Spain has a very good team and currently sit undefeated on the season, hopefully we can spoil that perfect season for the gold!