Women advance to basketball quarterfinals (08/04/96)

Women advance to basketball quarterfinals

by Roman Woronowycz

ATLANTA - Ukraine upset Australia in women's basketball, 54-48, on July 29, in a game that featured good defense, but some very anemic shooting. The win propelled Team Ukraine into the quarterfinals in group B competition.

Australia held the Olympics' top scorer, Maryna Tkachenko (20 points per games), to 10 points, but forward Oksana Dovhaliuk took up the slack with 15 points. Center Liudmyla Nazarenko added 13 points and dominated inside play with a game-high 15 rebounds.

Dovhaliuk, who the coaches expected would elevate her game to the next level at the Olympics, finally responded. Assistant Coach Volodymyr Kovianov said, "She has been the hope of the team from the very beginning." But he was not going to pat her on the back for a job well done. "However, today she did not play to her full potential, perhaps to 60 percent of her capabilities," he said, offering not criticism but an explanation of how much ability the young player has.

Ukraine maintained a six-point advantage for much of the half, at one point leading 20-12, but Australia, which shot only 24 percent in the first half, began hitting them, led by Michele Timms, who had nine before intermission and went on a 9-2 run to tie the score with eight seconds remaining. Dovhaliuk led Ukraine with nine points on 36 percent shooting.

The lead changed hands several times in the first minutes of the second half, and Ukraine finally took a 44-39 lead with 5:33 remaining. Then Timms answered with a three-pointer to bring Australia within two.

With two minutes to go and the score tied, Nazarenko buried a five-footer off the glass, was fouled and converted the free throw, which put Ukraine ahead for good.

Dovhaliuk sealed the game with 58.5 seconds remaining, scoring on a lay-up from a nice behind-the-back give and go from Tkachenko that put the Ukrainians up by six. The win was the first against the Australians in 11 meetings. Ukraine had lost 10 consecutive pre-Olympic competitions to the Aussies.

The Ukrainians appear finally to be getting their act together after defeats by the U.S. and Korea, which followed an easy win against Zaire in their opening game.

After the win against the Australians, Assistant Coach Kovianov explained that the team had not practiced or played together much because the players were completing their seasons in the Ukrainian leagues. "The absence of play was very easy to tell even in a game with a team like Zaire, where Ukraine played technically better but still could not get it together because of a lack of team play," he said.

The Ukrainian team now holds a 3-2 record, having beaten Cuba as well as Zaire and Australia, and is in second place behind the United States in group B. Brazil leads the A bracket with a 5-0 record.

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