OLYW - Hammon: we can beat anybody

LONDON (Olympics) - On Wednesday Russia's women maintained their 100% record at the Olympics by beating hosts Great Britain. The win also saw them book their place in the Quarter-Finals.

It was a laboured win, but Becky Hammon isn't sounding the alarm bells.

"Winning ugly is better than losing pretty," she says.

"We're 3-0 and we're happy about that."

Russia are focusing ahead, intent on progressing as the tournament goes on. The performance against Team GB was by no means perfect, but they held their nerve to fend off a late challenge.

"We want to continue to play better but most of all we want to play our best basketball in the end when it matters most.

"We can't be playing like that against France and Australia, cause it won't be good enough, but we've just got to learn from it and move on.

"We've got to rebound a little bit better, they had some people under the basket wide open. Our communication has to go up a notch with each other."

Safely through to the next round, Hammon says Russia must remain focused.

"The pressure's not there but you still wanna play well, your backs aren't against the wall but sometimes it can be a good thing having your back against the wall cause you come out scrapping and with more focus."

The fact that she enjoys pressure bodes well for Russia, with the 35 year-old expecting to come up against pre-tournament favourites USA at some point. And she very much believes that they can be beaten.

"Obviously the United States' bench is as good as their starting five and they come at you in waves.
"That's the hard thing.

"You'll see teams play with them the first quarter, a quarter and a half maybe but it's really hard to sustain that for 40 minutes when they can rotate the next five and the next five.

"We believe we can beat anybody, we've got to shoot well, take care of the ball well and do all the little things for it to go your way."

FIBA