Villanova Commit Maalik Wayns scored 7 points on 3 for 9 shooting as the USA beat Canada 82-66 in the Semifinal for the FIBA Americas U18 Championship. Wayns nabbed 4 rebounds, had an assist and two steals.
The US will play Argentina in today's Championship Game.
Post Game Quotes- Maalik Wayns (Roman Catholic H.S. / Philadelphia, Pa.)
Was this a little bit of a wake-up call for tomorrow night’s gold medal game?
Yeah. I think we got a little lax because we were beating teams by 30, 40 points. I think tonight we got a little lax, but tomorrow we have to come out and play like we played in the first games: team defense, team offense and things like that.On Canada’s play:
They came out and had a lot of confidence today. We didn’t play like ourselves today, but we got the win.Canada cut the game to eight points in the fourth quarter. What was the team’s mindset at that point?
We knew we needed to get some stops. We needed to get some easy transition buckets off of our defense, get as many stops as we could and run it right into our offense.How important is it to have the depth that this team has when you’re playing five games in five days?
That’s big because a lot of these teams are only playing eight, nine guys and by the fourth quarter since we’re running the whole game we wear them down. We’re playing 12 guys so it’s helping us a lot.