USA Women win the gold

Jeanette and Kayla proudly display the gold medals they earned as the USA Women defeated Russia 83-64 today in the World University Games.

This is Kayla's third gold medal with USA Basketball, which she thinks, "... is incredible. Three in a row like this, with this team especially. We had a blast, and we worked really hard for each other. It was just great."

It's Jeanette's first one, which is, "... amazing. I've never experienced this before. I know a lot of people have on this team. I'm sure it's great for them, but for the first time, it's amazing. It's so great."

Russia had the lead (28-20) early in the second quarter, but the USA, led by Jeanette's three-pointer, dug deep and gave it everything they had and controlled the rest of the game. Tina Charles had a huge double-double, 28 points and 18 rebounds.

Both of our Cardinals had fine games. Kayla was one rebound shy of a double-double with 11 points and nine rebounds.

Jeanette was busy, busy, busy! She had seven points, six rebounds, two steals and five assists with zero turnovers.

Here is the game report from USA Basketball, with links to the box score, quotes from Charli and all twelve players, and a photo gallery of the game and the medal ceremony.

The WUG have posted the cumulative statistics for the competition. Here is the USA's. As expected, coach Charli made good use of all the team members.

Jeanette had the most minutes per game by a small margin (22:57). She started six of the seven games, had an impressive 2.3 assist-to-turnover ratio, made 42% of her field goal attempts and 100% of her free throws.

Kayla started four games, had 45 rebounds (third-best after the two bigs - Charles and Lavender), made 44% of her field goal attempts and 89% of her free throws.