U.S. Women Swamp Jamaica

After getting tested by Cuba in their FIBA Americas Championship opener Wednesday, the U.S. Senior Women's National Team enjoyed a much more comfortable victory Thursday, defeating Jamaica 115-47. Already leading 48-28 at the half, the U.S. women outscored Jamaica 67-19 over the final 20 minutes.

The lopsided margin gave Head Coach Anne Donovan an opportunity to substitute freely. No player saw more than 21 minutes of action, and Donovan was pleased with all of her players.

"Everybody got to play and everybody did very, very well," Donovan said. "You look at our bench statistics and they're right in there helping us shoot 60 percent from the floor. There were a lot of good things on both end of the floor tonight."

Seimone Augustus came off the bench to score a game-high 19 points on 8-of-8 shooting. She was one of two reserves to score double-figures (Kara Lawson, with 11, was the other).

"We knew we were going to come in after the starters played their 10 minutes in the third quarter," explained Augustus, "and we didn't want to have any kind of drop off."

Lawson also deserves to be singled out for an impressively well-rounded effort: seven assists, seven boards and five steals.

As for Storm guard Sue Bird, she shot 5-of-7 from the field and scored 11 points, handing out two assists.

Former Storm post Simone Edwards led Jamaica with 18 points and nine rebounds, but only three Jamaican players had more than two points.

For more coverage of the game, be sure to check out USABasketball.com and Adam Hirshfield's live blog. The U.S. Women take on Canada tomorrow in their final game of group play at 1:00 p.m. That game will be televised live on NBA TV.

Elsewhere in Chile, Brazil defeated Chile 104-60 to join the U.S. as the only teams undefeated through two games (stats remain unavailable for that game). Barring stunning upsets, the U.S. and Brazil will be the top seeds from their respective groups.