Update from Chile: Despite Loss, Goal Remains Gold

Unfortunately, we lost our first game today. The good news is that we still advance to the next rounds, but we do so as the two seed from our group instead of the top seed. It basically just changes the path that leads to the gold medal. From here on out, any loss derails that opportunity.

We've been pretty inconsistent with our play over the past three games. My biggest challenge with this young group is to constantly remind them that up to this point, although they may have won games in their lives because of their talent, they need to have consistent effort, basketball intelligence and toughness to win going forward. Hopefully today's loss allowed that message to sink in a little better.

Canada was the better team today (Wednesday). They set the tempo of the game, used physical play and intelligence to take us out of what we wanted to do. When the game was in question they came out with huge hustle plays. The players were disappointed and I'm hoping they use that as motivation going forward. We watched the game film this evening and pointed out all the areas that we can improve and we defined roles so that everyone knows what they need to do for us to win going forward.

We head out to dinner in a few minutes and then we'll head over to watch the Brazil vs. Australia game since those are our next two possible opponents. We play again on Friday (versus France), time still yet to be determined (6:45 p.m.). Stay tuned for some good news from Chile over the weekend!