The Senior Women take a loss to France today in the Olympic Qualifying Tournament in Turkey today losing 56-47 to fall to 1-1.
The good news is that this loss doesn't affect Canada's chances of advancing to the next stage of the Qualifier at all. Mali should be beat by France tomorrow barring the entire French team coming down with some new superbug and even then Canada beat Mali anyway.
The bottom line in this game, outside the fact that the team is advancing to the next stage is that they played France tough. If you recall about two weeks ago, Canada got thumped by 25 by the French in their final exhibition game before the start of this tournament. What I see here is a better result despite the loss.
Canada did not shot the ball particularly well in today (13-of-53 2PT, 1-of-8 3PT) but they did match France in all other categories down the board. The SWNT women kept it tight in the end and even though this is a loss in the standings, we need to see this as progress against one of the better teams in the world.
The next step will be for Canada to take Wednesday off, relax, regroup and come out on fire against their next opponent. The next stage will be pitting Canada against a team from Group C and tomorrow the top two will duke it out to see who plays who. Canada will likely draw top team of the group which will either be Korea or Croatia (likely Croatia I think who the SWNT beat in exhibition action FYI) and then it will be do or die time.
There will be two shots at getting into the Olympics here, either being one of the top four or win the last spot through play off, but Canada will need to win the next game to ensure that it has a chance.