VS

And here are the final most of us have expected to see. Unfortunately this battle will be played without Calderon who is very important for Spain team. Without him in the roster they will be forced to play with Rubio and Lopez on point guard position and this could be a slight problem for spaniards. However Spain has enough options to make things diffucult for USA. They all must-have things to fight with USA. As I already wrote if you want to win over USA you must:

• Not to lose balls
• Play excellent zone defense
• Have physically strong centers inside the paint
• Team must force american to play at low pace

Spain has all this in their arsenal but now they should to find a way how to use this arsenal against specific US defense and offense.

Americans have not any seriuos games here in Beijing. They trashed all those teams including 37-points win against Spain. Here is some interesting info from US team assistant coach before the golden game:

How much better can Spain play than they did in the USA's first game against them?

A lot better. They have nothing to lose. They got beat by us by 37 points, so they will come out very loose, relaxed. The competition level is completely different now in the medal round, and any team can beat you on any given night. I think the Spanish players know that they can play better than they did. For our guys, I think the greatest thing is knowing that this is the gold medal game, and this is it. They are going to go out full force. We have to finish it right and play right. Spain will be a difficult team to beat. They have Pau Gasol, who's one of the great NBA players. They are a great team. I think they are going to come out very confident and just sit in a zone defense.

We broke the first game open partially through pressuring their guards, can we do that again?
It's looks like Jose Calderon won't play, and I think with Ricky Rubio being a 17-year old point guard, that's going to be a lot of pressure on him in a gold medal game. So, we are going to continue to play defense on the perimeter much like the first game. I think they will have to bring their big guys out to back screen us on the perimeter and relieve that pressure. Similar to what we've been saying every game, it's important that we don't lunge and try to get steals. We need to keep the ball on the side and prevent them from doing their drive and lob thing. They drive the ball into the middle and then lob it to Pau. They get a lot of stuff on that, and they cross screen a lot. And if you notice, with every team we play, they use their forwards to try and get physical with us. They are trying to get us to get emotional and take cheap shots. We have to make sure that we stay focused and finish this thing the right way. It won't be easy. It's the gold medal game, you throw it up and see who came to play.

The key task for Spain is to avoid slow start in this match because if USA will find their rhytm early than it will be almost impossible to stop them. But now I don't expect the same scenario as it was in a group match when Spain stopped playing in 3rd quarder and did not carried about points difference. They did not tried to defend as they can and one of the reason is that they knew that most important still waits them. In my opinion USA has almost ideal team and highest chances to win this game but if Spain will show their best skills and will play at 100% than it is gonna be a very interesting match to watch. As for me 21 points handicap looks a bit too big because Spain has all abilites to hold US offense under 95 points and score 75 points by theirself.

I hope that Spain will win this game and will root for them. This is a final game and as often happens miracles are possible there. Good Luck Spain!

Prediction: USA 92 - 78 Spain

Pick: Spain +21 @ 2.00 PinnacleSports

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