Additional Quotes >> USA 83, Brazil 64

June 18, 2012 • Sao Sebastiáo do Paraiso, Brazil

Billy Donovan, USA head coach
It was a much different game tonight then the team’s first two games.
I think this was something we needed going into the medal round just because the first two games at halftime were non-competitive. Playing almost a road game against Brazil was a good environment, you knew they were going to continue to fight and battle. I though at the start of the second half we didn’t handle that real well, but we kind of settled down and were able to get the lead back up to 20. I thought it was a game where we saw some adversity, which we had not seen in the first two games, which was good for us.

The second quarter was a pretty impressive performance by your team.
Yeah, I thought we played really, really well. In the first half I was really impressed because I think sometimes you look sat the fact that we played Mexico and we played the Virgin Islands and we beat both those teams by 50 plus point. Now here you’re playing against Brazil who struggled to beat Mexico, wins by 15-18 against U.S. Virgin Islands, and I know what our guys are thinking, they’re thinking ‘okay, we’ll just show up and play.’ And I thought we showed a lot of maturity in that first half. When we got up by 21 I think we probably let our guard down a little bit and didn’t handle the second half as well as we did the first half. Hopefully we can learn something here because now you’re playing for a medal and for us to get a chance to play for the gold we have to find a way to win tomorrow against Argentina.

Talk about your team’s inside game, Jarnell Stokes played well.
Jarnell was really great, he really gave us great minutes. Shaq (Goodwin) struggled, I never thought he got into the flow of the game, he got a couple of fouls early, I thought he lost his composure as little bit there in the second half. Jarnell really stayed the course and gave us a great presence; he had a really good solid game in around the basket. I though Julius (Randle) also played very, very well. As the game wore on he impacted the game a little bit more. I think our guys were a little bit taken back; we had dominated so may of these teams on the backboard that I actually thought Brazil did a very, very good job rebounding the ball. They had a plus one rebounding margin on us in the first half with 10 offensive rebounds. They out worked us in certain situations, but again I think those things are going to help us. I think the worst thing in the world when we get ready to play in the medal rounds is to not have any adverse circumstances and then get into that and not deal with it, so this was good for us.

What are your impressions of Argentina, who you play next?
Argentina is a really, really physical team, they really execute very well, they’re tough; they run a lot of different actions and that’s so hard. I’m not sure we even know what we’re doing, never mind trying to scout now. We’ll have a little bit of time in the morning to talk about them and get our guys familiar with Argentina, but I think right now the four teams left that are going to be playing for a medal – Brazil, USA, Argentina and Canada – all four of those teams have a unique style and some things they can hang their hat on and I think Argentina hangs their hat on their execution and being a physical, tough team.

Nathaniel Britt, II (Gonzaga H.S., D.C./Upper Marlboro, Md.)
This was a much different game than the USA’s first two games wasn’t it?
Yeah, that game was a lot more intense. Brazil was a little better. It was their hometown so they came out with a lot of intensity, a lot of aggression and they played with a lot of heart. It was a pretty was a pretty tough game for us.

What do you think was the key in this game?
I think the key was making sure we keep going inside because we have a big size advantage over everybody else and we want to utilize our bigs and crash the boards.

The U.S. team had a great second quarter, which included a 19-4 run. The team got running and playing aggressive D, it looked like everyone got energized pretty well during the run.
I think we did get energized. I think we were a little bit tired so it was hard to get each other going but as long as we keep talking to each other and the coaches keep pushing us, we can get sparks. We’ve got a lot of really good players so we’re very deep and we get sparks from our bench.

How important is this team’s depth?
It’s going to take a lot of effort to beat Brazil because like Coach said, it’s a home game, its probably going to be sold out, it’s a later game so everybody is going to be here and so we have to come in with the heart and passion we have and take the play out of them early like we have done in our two other games.

Julius Randle(Prestonwood Christian Academy/ McKinney, Texas)
After Brazil made the run to make the game tighter, we seemed to go back inside to get things going again.
We want to play inside out, we don’t want to shoot a bunch of threes because we have the inside advantage so we try and play inside out and let everything else fall in place.

How important were a couple of those defensive stands in the third quarter?
Very important because their crowd got back into it, they had a lot of energy so it was important for us to get some stops and gets some buckets, convert and get the momentum back in our favor.

The U.S. really got it going offensively and defensive in the second quarter.
It can be hard playing with other good players but you want to pick and choose your spots and I feel like whenever my team needed a boost I wanted to deliver. In the second and third quarters I kind of found some opportunities and I wanted to deliver on those.

How important is the USA’s depth?
Depth on a team is definitely important because we play a lot of running and pressing, we push the ball, and we have a lot of guys who can run up and down, push the ball, so whenever you’re in the game you want to give a full 100 percent and you know you’ve got guys on the bench that can do the same things as you. So whenever you’re in there you want to give 100 percent and control what you can control.

Jarnell Stokes (University of Tennessee /Memphis, Tenn.)
You had a great game and seemed to control the inside; can you speak about that?
I was able to use my strength and size that God blessed me with. Luckily I got a lot of easy baskets from my teammates such as Rodney (Purvis) came in and gave us some good minutes, Marcus (Smart), Nate (Britt), so the guys really got me going early.

How about the defensive effort tonight, the U.S. allowed just 64 points.
They ran pick and rolls and that something guys at the high school level don’t cover, it’s even hard on the college level, that’s our weakness now but its something we plan to keep working on.

Having played college games, you know the home teams always have a good run in them. We’re you expecting that out of Brazil tonight?
They played very passionate and tonight was a college like atmosphere, its like going to Kentucky and Rupp. I hadn’t seen anything like that as far as from a country standpoint and how they were cheering their guys on even though they were down 20. We felt like we were, down….it was a great effort by Brazil.