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Tina helps lead USA to Victory

February 26, 2004 - National Women's Basketball League (NWBL)
Houston Stealth News Release


The Stealth's own Tina Thompson helped key the USA Team to a blowout of Cuba. In its first outing in training for Athens, the 2004 USA Basketball Women's Senior National Team (1-0), behind 19 points from Lisa Leslie (Los Angeles Sparks), took advantage of ice cold shooting by Cuba (0-1) to earn a 73-37 victory on Tuesday night in Havana, Cuba. Further, in her USA Basketball debut, USA team hopeful Swin Cash (Detroit Shock) checked in for 12 points and seven rebounds.

"We've been together for only five practices and our defense was really good, our rebounding was excellent," said USA and Houston Comets head coach Van Chancellor. "After five practices this is about where I thought we'd be offensively, we're going to struggle with that a little bit. But overall I was really pleased with their effort tonight."

"The Cuban team has a lot of very athletic players," said Tina Thompson (Houston Comets), who notched 11 points, seven rebounds and eight steals. "Number 11 (Yamilet Martinez), number eight (Yuliseni Soria) their point guard, they stand out as leaders on that team. I don't think we're going to look ahead expecting to win the next two games though. We're going to take one game at a time because Cuba has a very tough team."

The United States set the tone early. Behind seven points from Shannon Johnson (San Antonio Silver Stars), and a steal each from Johnson, Sheryl Swoopes (Houston Comets) and Thompson, the USA stormed out to a 16-0 lead with just over three minutes expired in the game. Soria put her squad on the board at 6:30 in the first quarter. She then sunk a pair from the charity stripe and had a breakaway layup which pulled Cuba back within 10 points, 16-6, with 5:49 left in the quarter.

By 14:52 Cuba had closed to 17-9, but that was a short-lived single-digit deficit. Sue Bird (Seattle Storm) found Swoopes in back-to-back USA possessions to spur an 11-2 run that would end the quarter with the U.S. holding a solid 28-11 advantage. Playing with her University of Connecticut classmate Cash, Bird threaded the needle to find Cash inside, capping the run with 14 seconds remaining in the first quarter.

After Cuba scored the first five points of the second quarter the USA got eight points from Leslie as it rocketed out to another 11-2 run which virtually put the game away, 39-18, with 1:07 to go before halftime. As the buzzer sounded the teams to their locker rooms for the break, the U.S. was up 44-21.

The second half was more of the same as the United States surged ahead 56-27 at the end of three and outscored Cuba 10-17 in the fourth quarter for the eventual victory.

The U.S., which shot a scorching 68.0 percent from the field in the first half (17-25 FGs), closed the night shooting 53.8 percent from the floor (28-52 FGs), while its defense held Cuba to a frigid 21.2 percent from the floor (14-66 FGs) and just 6.7 percent (1-15 3pt FGs) from beyond the arc.

Tonight's contest was the first of a three-game exhibition series against the Cuba National Team at the Coliseo De La Ciudad Deportiva in Havana Feb. 24-26. The USA and Cuba continue play Feb. 25 at 8:45 p.m. (all times Eastern) and the USA concludes the series with a 7:00 p.m. tip-off on Feb. 26.

USA Basketball announced that the 2004 USA Basketball Women's Senior National Team will prepare for the 2004 Athens Olympics with three separate training sessions. In addition to the Feb. 19-27 training and competition, the U.S. will compete in Europe March 18-28 and April 2-13 in the United States. Each training camp will feature available core group members as well as other selected players who will compete for one of the USA Senior National Team's final three roster positions. The Olympics will be held August 13-29.

The U.S. squad is competing with just 11 players on the Cuba trip. DeLisha Milton-Jones (Los Angeles Sparks) tore the ACL in her right knee on Feb. 22 and did not travel with the squad

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