The FIBA Women’s Olympic Qualifying Tournament starts tomorrow!
The U.S. Women’s National Basketball Team will play the Belgian Cats tomorrow. More to come.
Game information
when: Thursday, February 8, 2024 at approximately 2:00 PM ET. It’s 8pm Central European Time.
where: Sports Palace Antwerp in Antwerp, Belgium
How to watch: In the United States, the game will be streamed on FIBA’s Courtside 1891 service.subscription required
What to watch out for
This is a match where both sides have very different expectations.
For Team USA, this game comes in the middle of the European professional basketball season break. This frees up time for international competitions such as friendlies and EuroBasket qualifiers. In this case, it’s the Olympic qualifying tournament. Sure, the Americans have already won and qualified for the 2022 FIBA Women’s World Cup, but they don’t want to get rusty either. We are pleased that the final roster is very close to the 12-man roster that will be seen in Paris at the start of the Olympics.
Some of you may be wondering if Team USA is thinking this is an easy win just because they’ve already qualified. I don’t think this is a problem. Team USA assistant coach and Washington Mystics general manager Mike Thibault said in a pregame interview that this game will not be easy for the Americans and that they will take this tournament seriously.
Ariel Atkins of the Mystics will also play for Team USA. She will have a good chance to show off her defensive prowess against the Cats’ top guards like Julie Allemand and Julie Vanloo (currently on the Mystics’ training camp roster).
If the Americans take a business-like approach to the tournament, the Belgians will not, at least not in this match. The Cats, the reigning Women’s EuroBasket champions, will host the match in front of a sold-out crowd of more than 14,000 at Sports Palace Antwerp, Belgium’s largest indoor arena. Needless to say, tomorrow’s crowd will be the largest for a women’s sporting event in Belgian history.
Think about it for a moment. The maximum audience for a basketball game is 20,000 at an NBA game. And while Belgium is well known for its female sports stars, such as former tennis players Justine Henin and Kim Clijsters, it is not particularly known for women’s team sports other than field hockey.
But in women’s basketball, Belgium is not only better than its closest neighbor to the north, the Netherlands, and its much larger neighbor to the south, France. The Cats are currently the best team in Europe and host the defending world champions.
On that note, former Mystics forward Emma Meessmann of the Belgian Cats sees this game as history-writing, and how honored she is to be a part of it. Messeman speaks everything here in Dutch, but there are English subtitles.
I wonder where Messeman stands professionally (she’s with Fenerbahce in Turkey’s KBSL), that she’s the best player in the EuroLeague women’s mile, and that she could be the WNBA MVP here. , if she was as serious as she was during the match, you could say here. 2019 WNBA Finals… But I know you don’t care about that anymore, so I’ll leave aside how much better she is compared to the players on Team USA.
Messeman will play tomorrow, but some of her key sidekicks will be absent, especially the post. Cara Linskens, who has been the starting center for the Belgian national team in the past few tournaments, is absent from this tournament due to an ankle injury. To make matters worse, according to Sporza newspaper (link in Dutch) Linkens will miss the Olympics due to the injury.
Who will win?
Team USA should easily beat the Cats by the second half of this contest.
This game will be emotional for the Cats, but the Americans know Messeman well. Not just from his time with the Mystics, but also because many of them are now playing internationally, including in Turkey. And in Team USA’s final two head-to-head games against Belgium, Messeman was barely involved. This team would let her play like the “Reluctant Emma” of her early Mystics days, but her home crowd was disappointed.
Linskens’ absence further exacerbates why I don’t think Messeman is going to be close to a triple-double like he was on a pro team. Finally, I don’t think the Belgian guard has the size to match Team USA, even though Allemand has years of experience with the Indiana Fever (2020) and Chicago Sky (2022).
I’ve rated the Belgian Cats highly in the past, but in hindsight, I may have rated the Belgian Cats too high before their matchup with Team USA. But the Americans are bringing a legitimate A team to Antwerp, and the Cats are losing one of their key post players. That’s a recipe for a terrible explosion.
Barring a sudden hot shooting night from Vanloo, Allemand, and perhaps more players including Messeman, I don’t think this game will be that close.
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