A RIO DISAPPOINTMENT
Canada falls to Venezuela in a win-and-you’re-in-the-Olympics semifinal.
MEXICO CITY— You could see it from the start — a nervousness, a tentativeness, a skittishness. “Unsure” was how Canada head coach Jay Triano described it.
It was a very large, significant moment and a largely young and entirely unproven Canadian team — riding a wave of ultra confidence and success — discovered Friday night there are painful, painful lessons to be learned in high intensity sport.
A controversial last-second call — and the game should not have come down to that — led to a free throw with less than half a second left that propelled Venezuela to a 79-78 win in the semifinals of the FIBA Americas championship and into the 2016 Rio Olympics.
Forget for a minute the call that put Gregory Vargas on the line with three-tenths of a second left, because it was an uncharacteristic perfor- mance from Canada all night that has derailed their Olympic dreams for now.
There were 17 turnovers, many ghastly and unforced; there were a dozen loose balls that weren’t corralled, there were missed rebounds and a general malaise that was in stark contrast to the way Canada had played each night for more than a week. Nerves? Perhaps.
“It seemed like we were a little bit unsure, said Triano. “I think this is a great experience for our young kids, Kelly (Olynyk, masterful with 34 points) is one of our most veteran guys, he’s been here before . . . a lot of these other guys have not been in this climate.”
None of Canada’s high-profile NBAers — who found things so easy in seven straight wins by more than 25 points — stepped up Friday night. Anthony Bennett didn’t score a single point, Andrew Wiggins had only nine and had no sustained impact on the game and Cory Joseph was saddled with two quick fouls and had only five points in just 22 minutes.
“I played horrible,” Joseph said in a standup moment. “I didn’t lead my team today. We didn’t play well as a group. We played crappy. I’m just disappointed. I didn’t do my job. We didn’t do our jobs, either.”
The foul that led to the Vargas’s free throw was disputable. It came in a scrum for a missed Venezuelan shot when Aaron Doornekamp may or may not have hit Vargas. The three referees, none of whom made a definitive call, finally determined a foul had been called and needed video review to see if it had occurred before the buzzer. It had, they put threetenths of a second on the clock and Vargas won it with his first throw.
“I’m not one to bash the officials . . . I never do, I never complain,” Joseph said. “I can say it shouldn’t have came down to that. But in terms of the call, I think it was crappy. It is what it is but it shouldn’t have come down to that. I feel like they took a shot, the ball bounced up 20 feet in the air.
“To call Doornekamp on that is kind of different (but) there’s no excuses. It never should have came down to that. “We played horrible.” Canada does have some life left in its Olympic dream. A top-five finish here qualified them for one of three six-team last-ditch tournaments in July at sites to be determined. Canada would have to win that tournament after missing its chance at sewing up a spot with a semifinal win here Friday night.
“We are going to grow from this and our opportunity to play in the Olympics is put on hold . . . we’re going to have to find a way to make it work next summer,” said Triano.