Yesterday, the USA Women’s National Basketball Team defeated Belgium 81-79 in Antwerp. I’m not going to tell the general story of the game, but mainly focus on the buzzer-beaters scored by Belgium and Washington Mystics training camp signee Julie Vanloo and New York Liberty forward Brianna Stewart. I wrote about the match.
You can watch the game in action in the video below.
It’s great for Team USA that Stewie saved the day on a night when the Belgian Cats clearly had the upper hand in the backcourt. Preventing former WNBA player Emma Measman from scoring and forcing her to be “Reluctant Emma” is a good strategy, so even if the Americans lost last night, we’re paying Team USA money. Hats off to Vanloo and Maxel Lissois Mbaka for letting the guard down. Until the end.
But if you watch the video, courtside fans were accusing Team USA and Las Vegas Aces guard Kelsey Plumb of going out of bounds while that possession was occurring. If you need proof of that, here it is. Coincidentally, Vanloo was also protecting Plum in that possession.
Note that this snapshot is from Sporza’s production of that play. The link is in Dutch. More on that later.
So maybe it’s time to write about this play. And yes, Julie Vanloo did a great job defending and pushing Plum out of bounds…. pic.twitter.com/AxnbM6YLrC
— BF_Mystics (@BF_mystics) February 9, 2024
So why was this play created?
Ultimately, it comes down to the technicality of whether to call an out-of-bounds play.
On the Sporza site linked above, Jonny Jacobs, a referee instructor for Basketball Vlaanderen (Dutch for “Flanders Basketball”), says that in FIBA competitions, if there is no whistle to declare an out, there is no challenge. He said he could not. So even if the referees noticed that Plumb was wide of the mark while reviewing Stewart’s subsequent shot, there was nothing they could do.
At the end of the day, do you think this play was a make-or-break situation for the Belgian Cats or Team USA? Yes and no. I think Plum should have been called for going out of bounds. If that had happened, the game would likely have gone into overtime.
However, given the momentum the American team had heading into the end of regulation, I don’t think the Cats could have advanced. And to be honest, I think the Cats should have put Team USA in the fourth quarter. Messeman was taken out of the game as a scorer, but if she had somehow managed to get one or two more buckets in the fourth quarter, perhaps I would have written about the biggest victory in Belgium’s national history, and for that I would have written about the Crows. I would have eaten it.
Instead, what I would say is that the Cats will be a more effective scorer against a team like Team USA, even though all players know what Messeman is capable of. The Cats just have to find a way.