San Juan, Aug 27: The USA Men's Basketball team cruised by Team Canada 111-71 in Olympic qualifying in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Allen Iverson made seven successive three pointers in the third quarter, finishing the game with 28 points, to lead the United States to victory over Canada in a second round game of the Olympic qualifying basketball tournament on Monday (August 25). Canada came out strongly in the first quarter as Steve Nash inspired Canada to a 28-21 early second-quarter lead. But when Nash was benched, the Canadians only scored another 11 points to go into the halftime break 51-39 down. Iverson then went mad, landing three pointers from all areas outside the key to set up a 82-59 lead at the end of the third quarter before the U.S. then cruised to victory with Vince Carter, Ray Allen and Tim Duncan finishing with 16 points each. Canada's coach Jay Triano said the schedule had been a factor in his decision to restrict Nash's playing time to 10 minutes.


Canada play Brazil on Tuesday, while the U.S. take on last year's world championships silver medallists, Argentina.


The top four teams in the second round advance to the semi-finals on August 30 with the medal-winning teams all qualifying for next year's Athens Olympics.


Bureau Report