World Tune-Up. In what could hardly be called an offensive battle, the USA National Team defeated Australia, 56-49, on Thursday night at Duke's Cameron Indoor Stadium. The exhibition game was a prelude to the FIBA World Championship starting next week in Brazil. As Mystics fans know, Alana Beard and DeLisha Milton-Jones are both members of Team USA. AB scored 7 points in 22 minutes of play (to go along with 2 steals and 2 turnovers), while Dee scored 9 points and had 7 rebounds and 1 steal in 23 minutes. There was also a Mystics alum on the floor for the Aussies, Jenny Whittle, who long-time fans will recall was, well, just a whittle disappointing when she played here in the WNBA. . . the BasketCases have a hard time recalling whether she scored even a single point when playing for the Mystics. She scored 2 points last night in 11 minutes of play. The USA's Tina Thompson led all scorers with 15 points.

Alana clearly enjoyed being back on her college floor:

"It was a great feeling being back. I started getting hyped when the band starting playing when we were out there warming up. I started reminiscing about being out there, starting in the games. So that was really exciting for me."

The USA's World Championship games will be shown live on NBA-TV, with Fox Sports rebroadcasting the games at midnight EDT. (Now, we told you earlier this summer what a great deal NBA-TV is, didn't we?)

U-S-A! U-S-A!


Photo Credit: goDuke.com