France women’s coach Pierre Vincent admitted that he did not want his side to play Team USA following his team’s qualification to the quarter-finals.
After a 64-60 victory over Canada, improving them to 3-0 in the process, Vincent insisted that he was not celebrating just yet – as they have two games still to play – against Great Britain on Friday and finishing on Sunday morning against Russia.
Vincent said that his French side will maintain the standard they are setting and let go down any gears. Mainly because he wants his side to avoid the United States of America in the next round.
“We have qualified but we don’t want to finish, let’s say fourth so we want to play hard for all the competition,” he said.
“We want to avoid United States if we can but it’s just important to play well all the way. We are getting better and better, we’ve defended smartly against Canada and we have to keep on working on our game.”
France were surprise victors over Australia after a period of overtime, as team captain Celine Dumerc sealed the win on that day from the free-throw line.
She copied her feat against a determined Canadian squad, by hitting both her free-throw with seconds left to end a Canadian comeback.
“It’s amazing to be in the quarter-finals but we want to finish as high as we can,” Dumerc admitted. “We made some big mistakes but we didn’t lose but we made the final three points after we lose offensive rebounds but that was the idea of the game, we started really bad in the first half but we got stops and we got into a good flow.”
France have also defeated Brazil en route to the quarter-finals. They will host next year’s Eurobasket Women.
