Team USA and Slovenia are playing live in the FIBA Basketball World Cup 2014 quarterfinals round and the matchup is live from ESPN on TV and online from ESPN3 on the WatchESPN website at Palau Sant Jordi, Barcelona in Spain as the next round of the tourney gets underway at 3 pm ET and Derrick Rose, Kyrie Irving and Anthony Davis are taking on pro Goran Dragic and his brother Zoran as they try and push towards the gold medal game.
The United States has been the best team in the tournament and everyone expects them to win out, but that have a tough matchup now, as Slovenia is one of the better teams in the tournament. Mike Krzyzewski has praised his teams play coming into this round and now they have a chance to keep things going as they move along in the tournament and it comes after a great group stage when the team went undefeated in five games.
The United States ended up 5-0 in the group stage if the tournament and now they look to be the favorite as the quarterfinals get going. The team dominated the Dominican Republic as well as Ukraine and Finland had a tough test with Turkey it was one of the other favorites in the tournament.
Turkey and the United States played in the finals for the gold-medal of the last tournament that now they could match up again while Spain also looks like a favorite for the gold medal game. Spain has Pau Gasol and Slovenia has Goran Dragic, but no one has the talent that the United States have on their roster with names like James Harden, Anthony Davis, Derrick Rose, Kyrie Irving, DeMarcus Cousins and Kenneth Faried and they have all been playing well.
Team USA lost Paul George to an injury and Kevin Durant to time off and now they have to pull together to make it through. The team was trailing at the half against Turkey and now they have the chance to fully put that behind them and the biggest issues against Slovenia are their size and speed and they are just as athletic as the US, albeit with lesser talents.
The two teams played in a friendly and that had the US dominate with their big men, with Anthony Davis putting up an amazing stat line of 18 points, five blocks and nine rebounds, while Derrick Rose added 11 points. The Americans pulled away after the score was cut to six in that game and they ended up winning by 30 points. The Australians pulled some shenanigans and now they could face off against the US in the semis rather than now and Dragic called out the team on doing that and now he has the chance to win for his team.
