Edmonton — Dominance.
The Canadian women’s senior basketball team has set a new standard for itself as it ploughs through its opposition in what is turning into a charmed summer, the kind of overwhelming success that accrues to those who put in years working towards it.
On Thursday night at the Saville Community Sports Centre they were supposed to be tested, to get a feel for whether thrashing Chile or Dominican Republic by 50 earlier in pool play at the FIBA Americas Tournament would translate against a team with a little more oomph internationally.
They passed the test. When you beat a respected opponent like Cuba 92-43 to run your record to 4-0 with a point differential of 54 per game, you are no longer competing against the opposition; you are competing against your own internal standards.
That’s not the only motivation for a group of women who are gaining their due after years of struggling for recognition.
“It’s so much fun,” said veteran Kim Gaucher, whose 11 points made her one of five Canadians in double figures, led by Kia Nurse with 14. “We go through two-a-days all summer long and we’ve been dreaming of playing in our home country, everyone is just jumping at the chance to get out on the court and show what we’re capable of.”
Cuba came into the final game of pool play 3-0, just like Canada. And they had a pretty impressive victory margin too, having won by an average of 24 points per game.
And there was history. At the 2013 Tournament of the Americas, the two countries met in the finals and it was Cuba who prevailed after Canada had beaten it easily in pool play, robbing the Canadians of their first-ever gold medal at the event.
More recently they met in the final game of pool play at the Pan Am Games in Toronto last month and Canada had to scratch and claw its way to a three-point win that allowed it to avoid the United States in the semi-final and set up its electrifying win over the U.S. for Pan Am gold.
But that tournament, though gratifying, was only a prelude to what really mattered: a chance to secure a birth in the 2016 Olympics they can earn here.
Which brings us back to the question: how good is Canada? How much to read into its cumulative 9-0 record on home soil this summer heading into the semi-finals of FIBA Americas on Saturday?
The answer is very good. The answer is this is a team that is continuing to improve even as they are already playing at a level no one in the Americas can touch outside the best the USA has to offer, and they’re not here having already qualified for the Olympics as World Champions.
But it hasn’t happened in just one summer. As a group, Canada is like a band that seems like an overnight success, but only after years of slugging it out without anyone noticing. The core of this team squeaked into the 2012 Olympics where they finished eighth and then won silver in the Tournament of the Americas in 2013 and earned a fifth-place finish at the World Championships in 2014 before their gold medal showing at the Pan Ams, their first in the event’s history.
“Coming into a tournament like this, we want to peak at the right time and that’s exactly what we’re doing,” said Miranda Ayim, who sparked Canada by getting six of her 12 points in the opening minutes of the first quarter. “At the Pan Ams we got better each game and that’s what we’re doing here. The confidence that we’re bringing into this tournament is showing and all the hard work that we’ve put in the past three years, not just this summer, is finally coming to fruition.”
Canada did catch a break in that one of Cuba’s best bigs, Marlene Cepeda, was sidelined with a knee injury, but it’s hard to imagine one player could have made a difference.
On offence, Canada continued a display of precision ball movement and cutting in an effort to substitute good shots with great shots. The result was a team that shot 59 percent in the first quarter on their way to 21-13 lead. The egalitarian approach that saw eight of 12 players average at least eight points per game through three games yet none as many as 12 continued, as Canada’s 21 points in the first 10 minutes were split among eight players.
But Canada showed itself more in the grittier aspects. Tamara Tatham was the first of many Canadian players who beat Cuba to the floor and were rewarded with the loose ball and often a basket. A few moments later and it was Nurse getting on the wood and digging up a ball that led to a Kim Gaucher jumper that put Canada up 11-5 early.
And defensively it was a statement performance with the key message being: ‘you can’t score on us.’
The game was effectively decided in the second quarter when Canada held Cuba without a field goal for the entire period. They were 0-for-13 for the quarter and five-of-33 for the half, with the buzzer signaling another shot clock violation ringing out like a doorbell at a housewarming.
Canada led 42-19 at half and made sure they didn’t let up by winning the third quarter 18-11.
There were some moments of concern. Team captain Shona Thorburn left the game early in the first quarter with what appeared to be a badly sprained left ankle. Nurse gave the sold-out crowd of 2,600 a brief scare when she landed heavily on her back and head after being undercut on a fast break late in the third quarter, but she bounced up to finish the three-point play. “The [hair] bun always saves me,” she said.
And if you’re being picky, Canada was coming in fresh from an off-day while Cuba was playing its fourth game in four nights and more than likely went into cruise control once the game got out of reach.
“That was not indicative of how good a team Cuba can be,” said Canadian head coach Lisa Thomaidis.
But dominant teams don’t make allowances for their opponent’s weaknesses. They try to get up by 10 and then stretch it to 20 and then to 30. They don’t play the score, they play their game, and Canada’s game is the class of the field right now, with no sign of letting up.