US loss to Greece Disappointing, not Surprising

I just finished watching Team USA 101 to 95 to Greece in one of the semi-final games of the 2006 Men's World Championships. Though I'm disappointed in the loss, I'm not surprised because I believed Greece would be a very tough match-up for the young USA squad.

Throughout the international games played by Team USA this summer thus far, two of their major weak points were defending the pick-and-roll and limiting dribble penetration in the paint.

Greece excells at both of those skills.

I haven't seen the final stats for the game (yet); but, I'm sure Greece scored a high number of points in the paint off the pick-and-roll. They killed Team USA in the third quarter by effectively running the pick-and-roll time after time.

Since Team USA seemed clueless and / or powerless to stop it, Greece stuck with the pick-and-roll. Why "fix something if it ain't broke"?

Add awful free throw shooting to the porous defense, and, it's a wonder Team USA lost by just six points.

There's no doubt Team USA is more physically talented than Greece; but, Greece has more experience playing together as well as playing under FIBA (re: international) rules.

Gone are the days when America could put together a team in a few weeks and defeat the very good international teams like Greece, Spain, and Argentina without doing the "little things" correctly.

For goodness sakes, will somebody teach Team USA how to make their free throws?! Damn! They were shooting around (a very mediocre) 70% in the Tournament before playing Greece; and, they had to have missed about 14 of their 28 (or so) free throws in this six point loss.