The Senior Canadian Women’s Basketball Team failed to advance to the quarterfinals of the Paris Olympics after they went win-less in their group. They lost to France in a blowout, a close game to Australia and then lost to Nigeria in their final game of the group play stage. This is the second straight Olympics that the women’s basketball team has failed to advance to the quarterfinals. They finished in ninth place at the Tokyo 2021 Olympic Games. They finished even worse in these Olympics as they finish in 11th place.
This is incredibly disappointing. When I originally started covering the Canadian Senior Women’s National Basketball Team, it was during the 2016 Rio Olympics. There was so much joy and excitement for just being able to qualify and play in the Olympics. They fought hard in their games and advanced to to the quarterfinal only to lose to France in a tightly contested game. I personally thought that they would improve within the next Olympics and get to the semifinals. Unfortunately, that did not happen as they went 1-2 in their group play and did not advance to the quarterfinals.
It’s the same ending as it was in Tokyo. Three years later with an even worse result. Canada had not gone win-less in group play since the Atlanta 1996 games. As a blogger/freelance writer, I am so glad I wasn’t able to attend neither Tokyo or these Paris Olympic Games. I would’ve been so disappointed. It’s not easy to travel and this is my side-hustle. This isn’t my day job. I would’ve felt annoyed that I wasted money on coming to Tokyo or Paris. Look at what I wrote in my 2021 Tokyo Olympics blog post. I wrote that it was disappointing and yet again, they fail to advance to the quarterfinals. This isn’t right anymore. We have the talent. This is an administrative issue. Something deeper is going on. We need more WNBA stars and we have to wait until we have more of them so that they can compete against these international FIBA stars as well as WNBA stars/superstars who support their respective country.
The Olympics are a quick FIBA international tournament. Of course, the best of the best are going to compete to a high standard and play their best. Their is no way the elite players would come to Olympics on a bad note. Bridget Carleton played really well. As a member of the Minnesota Lynx, she averaged 13.3 points per game, 6.3 rebounds per game and 2.0 steals per game in these Olympics. Shay Colley was great too, however, she turned the ball over a ton at 7.3 turnovers per game. That’s not good. Their offense wasn’t great in all three games as well as their defense.
Team Canada needs to assemble a roster full of younger stars and it’s time for a new head coach. A coach who can figure out their opponents better and play better than the last two Olympic cycles.
Currently, Canada is ranked 5th in the world. The rankings system will lower after these Olympics because of Canada’s 11th place finish. I sincerely did want to blog and or write about the team as they made progress, but sadly I cannot do that and now have to wait two years for the FIBA World Cup and four more years to write about the Olympic Games. How frustrating. However, Andrew will continue to provide Olympic basketball coverage on my blog and he will write about the quarterfinal, semifinal, bronze medal, gold-medal game and provide a quick recap. There’s so many incredible countries still competiting and it should be wonderful to watch moving forward.
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