The Cats aren’t out of this officially yet, but they will likely have to win AND blow out Japan by a BIG margin to make it to the quarterfinals in Olympic 5X5 women’s basketball.
The Belgium women’s national basketball team plays Japan tomorrow early in the morning in Lille for the 2024 Olympics.
Game info
When: Sunday, Aug. 4 at 5 a.m. ET
Where: Decathlon Arena, Lille, France
TV: USA Network. Otherwise, watch on Peacock. For instructions see Albert Lee’s post.
What to watch for
This game is mostly for protocol. It doesn’t appear likely that either Belgium OR Japan will make the quarterfinals, but someone has to be third place.
As Albert Lee wrote earlier, after losing both of their games so far (to Germany and USA), the Belgian Cats only have a theoretical chance to advance, even if they beat Japan tomorrow. But the chances of that happening aren’t great.
As of now, China beat Puerto Rico, 80-58 earlier today to clinch third place. By beating Puerto Rico by 22 points, the Chinese now have a point differential of -1, which looks good enough to move onto the next round. The Cats look like they will have to beat Japan by 26 points to tie China’s point differential. They really need more like a 30 point victory to feel “safe” about clinching an Olympic spot. That’s doable, but it’s going to be an ugly game to see,
In their last matchup on July 21, Belgium won, 75-65 in friendly. This time, the game counts, but the Cats are going to need to run up the score. For that matter, so does Japan. They still can win this game, where they will need to beat the Cats by 36 points just to tie China’s point differential.
So, perhaps, it’s not one of those games you’re going to wake up at 5 a.m. for, unless you are a super fan of Julie Vanloo, of course! She has been playing reasonably well, scoring 11 points in the loss to Team USA.
Here are the highlights from the Belgium-USA game a couple days ago: link.