USA Women Open World University Games With 85 Point Win Over France

The Team USA Women’s World University Games Team had no problems today in Belgrade, Serbia as they opened up the World University Games with an 115-30 shellacking of France.

Team USA was led by UConn Huskies senior center Tina Charles who led five players in double figures with 18 points and added 6 rebounds. Her UConn teammate Tiffany Hayes chipped in with 15 points, 2 assists and a blocked shot.

Maya Moore didn’t play in the game due to a sore knee and will be reevaluated today.

Here are some quotes from the UConn contingent courtesy of USA Basketball:

Tina Charles:

On the French team:
They kept pushing, kept going hard, regardless of what they score was. They kept running and trying to go to the boards, trying to score.

How difficult is it to stay focused when you’re up by so much?
It’s not hard at all. With us being collegiate athletes and being in situations like that, I’m sure all of us have been in a similar situation. We’re able to keep our focus and it helped us a long way.

Was there something you were trying to work on during the game?
Our press. We pressed up in the back court a lot. We were also trying to push the ball in transition and things like that.

Tiffany Hayes:

On today’s game:
Basically we had to keep a level head, even though we blew the game out of the water. We just had to make sure that we didn’t slow down. We were working on our plays and keeping the tempo up. We just had to work on that.

What did coach talk to you about at halftime?
She told us that we didn’t need to slack up, that we were winning the battle of the boards, which is one of our goals. We need to keep playing hard, even though it’s hard to do that when you’re up by so much.

What did you think about your first international game?
It was fun. It was pretty good. We came together as a team and played pretty well with each other. I was really happy to see that all of us were getting hyped with each other when we did something well, running to help each other up, little things like that. It makes me really happy, I was really glad to see that.

USA Women Cruise To Easy 115-30 Win Over France To Open 2009 World University Games Play [USA Basketball]