A 41-point answer in Berlin
Sunday was ugly. The United States shot 28.6 percent and scraped past Italy 55-52. Monday night in Berlin they hit 42 of 80 attempts, assisted on 32 of those baskets and beat the Czech Republic 105-64.
Breanna Stewart led it with 19 points, seven rebounds and six assists. She went 8-for-11 from the floor after making 1 of 9 against the Italians.
The Americans finish 3-0 and win Group D. They also stretched their World Cup winning run to 33 games.
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The margin arrived early
29-15 after ten minutes. 57-33 at half-time. The Czechs trimmed it to 20 during the third quarter, then went 4 minutes 24 seconds without scoring while the United States rattled off 11 points inside that stretch. The rest was scheduling.
Angel Reese added 13 points and six assists. Napheesa Collier and Jackie Young scored 12 apiece, Paige Bueckers and Sonia Citron 10 each. Caitlin Clark handed out a team-high seven assists alongside nine points. Kiki Iriafen pulled down 11 rebounds, six of them off the offensive glass.
Eliska Joklova top-scored for the Czech Republic with 19 points, including 11 of 14 from the free-throw line. Her team closes the group 0-3 and had already lost any route to the knockout stage before tip-off.
Quarter-finals on Thursday
Winning the group buys a direct route. The United States skip the qualification round entirely and go straight to Thursday’s quarter-finals, joining the other three group winners: Spain, France and Belgium.
Their opponent will be Hungary or Japan, who meet first in the play-in reserved for the second and third-placed teams. China claimed second in Group D by beating Italy 71-51 on the same day.
Three games in four days against China, Italy and the Czech Republic, three wins. The middle one read as a warning. The last one did not.
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