Saturday, August 4, 2012

Olympic roundup, Aug. 3

Abby Wambach protects her turf while battling New Zealand's Ria Percival for the ball in the Americans' 2-0 win. Photo: Sergey Ponomarev, Associated Press / SF
Abby Wambach protects her turf while battling New Zealand's Ria Percival for the ball in the Americans' 2-0 win. Photo: Sergey Ponomarev, Associated Press / SF

Women's soccer

U.S. soccer star Abby Wambach slid onto an Alex Morgan pass in the 27th minute to knock home her fourth goal of the tournament and then celebrated with a cartwheel in a 2-0 win over New Zealand in the quarterfinals of the Olympic tournament.

Sydney Leroux added an insurance goal in the 87th minute for the two-time defending Olympic champion Americans, who will play Canada in Manchester on Monday. France faces Japan in the other semifinal.
Volleyball

Destinee Hooker scored 19 points, and the U.S. women's volleyball team clinched the top spot in its pool with a preliminary-round victory over Serbia in straight sets.

The top-ranked United States has won all four of its matches in London, dropping just two sets. The team, which has never won Olympic gold in volleyball, is among the favorites to medal in London.

Stanford alum Logan Tom added 12 points for the United States in the 25-17, 25-20, 25-16 sweep. The team will wrap up the preliminary round with a match against Turkey on Sunday.
Women's basketball

Diana Taurasi scored 18 points, and Tina Charles had 16 points and 14 rebounds to lead the Americans to an 88-61 win over the Czech Republic on Friday.

The Americans (4-0) have now won 37 straight games in the Olympics, including four straight gold medals.

The U.S. had rolled through its first three opponents, winning by 36 points a game, and continued the onslaught against the Czechs (1-3), who will need to win their final game Sunday to possibly advance to the quarterfinals.

The Czechs led 26-24 after the first quarter after hitting six of their first 10 three-point attempts. They didn't hit another three-pointer the rest of the game, missing their final 11 attempts.

While the Czechs went cold, the Americans heated up behind Charles and Tamika Catchings.

Trailing 30-26, the Americans scored 22 of the next 28 points to go up 48-36 with 2:18 left in the half. Catchings and Charles each had six points during the burst.
News and notes

Wojdan Ali Seraj Abdulrahim Shahrkhani became the first Saudi woman to compete at the Olympics when she lost her judo fight in 82 seconds. And she only made it to the mat after a compromise between Olympic organizers, the international judo federation and Saudi officials cleared the way for her to wear a modified hijab. ... Five hours after the U.S. men's boxing team thought it was done in London, amateur boxing's governing body overturned Errol Spence's 13-11 loss to Indian welterweight Krishan Vikas, ruling that Vikas committed nine holding fouls in the third round alone and intentionally spit out his mouthpiece in the second round, which should have resulted in at least four points of deductions. Spence advances to the quarterfinals. ... Defending beach volleyball gold medalists Todd Rogers and Phil Dalhausser of the United States were knocked out of the Olympics by Italy.

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