Canada’s men’s squad hasn’t participated in the Olympics since Sydney 2000.
“The game was decided in the last possessions, both teams made big scores, but we had the last shot and Cory (Joseph) won the game”.
The Gold Medal game of the 2015 FIBA Americas Championship between Argentina and Venezuela will be played today at 20.30hs (local time in Mexico). “Where we are in our program, it was a great experience to beat a team in their own country and get the win after what happened yesterday”.
Venezuela’s players pose wearing Mexican “sombreros” as they…
Canada’s Cory Joseph celebrates his winning point that lead his…
He tallied 11 points, eight assists, and six rebounds the day after Canada had utterly collapsed against the scrappy Venezuelan team that ruined their bid for an Olympic berth in Rio next summer.
Olynyk, coming off a 34-point, 13-rebound performance in Friday’s semifinal loss to Venezuela, picked up his second straight double double with 10 points and 11 boards.
Mexico trailed by nine with two minutes left, but rallied to take the lead in the finals seconds of the contest thanks to a magistral from Gustavo Ayon, Marco Ramos and Paul Stoll who combined for 51 Mexico points.
Canada will still have other opportunities to secure a bid for the 2016 Olympics in one of next year’s qualifying tournaments, and they’ll definitely use their embarrassing meltdown in Mexico City as a lesson sorely learned about the perils of navigating the ever-treacherous waters of worldwide basketball.
“We didn’t reach our goal that we wanted to, but we took a step in the right direction as a group and we’ll continue to build”, said Joseph.
Cory Joseph hits awesome buzzer-beater for Canada