Basketball at the 1972 Summer Olympics
Encyclopedia

Group B

Qualified for the semifinals
Team Pts
7 0 639 479 +230 14
5 2 547 471 +76 12 1W–1L 1.072
5 2 582 484 +98 12 1W–1L 1.013
5 2 570 531 +39 12 1W–1L 0.917
3 4 482 518 −36 10
2 5 520 536 −16 9
1 6 526 666 −140 8
0 7 405 586 −181 7

Medal bracket

Classification brackets

5th–8th Place
9th–12th Place
13th–16th Place

Forfeited match.

Gold Medal Match controversy

The 1972 Olympic men's basketball gold medal game was one of the most controversial in Olympic history and was the first ever loss for Team USA since the sport began Olympic play in 1936. The United States team won the previous seven gold medals and was favored to win another in Munich for the 1972 Summer Olympics
1972 Summer Olympics
The 1972 Summer Olympics, officially known as the Games of the XX Olympiad, were an international multi-sport event held in Munich, West Germany, from August 26 to September 11, 1972....

. The team convincingly won its first eight games of the tournament putting its overall Olympic record at 63–0 and setting up a final against the Soviet Union.

With the U.S. team trailing 49–48, American guard Doug Collins
Doug Collins
Paul Douglas "Doug" Collins is a retired American basketball player, a former four-time NBA All-Star and currently the head coach of the NBA's Philadelphia 76ers.-High school and college:...

 stole a Soviet pass at halfcourt and was fouled hard by Zurab Sakandelidze
Zurab Sakandelidze
Zurab Aleksandrovich Sakandelidze was a Georgian basketball player who won gold with the Soviet basketball team in Basketball at the 1972 Summer Olympics. He trained at Dynamo club in Tbilisi....

 as he drove toward the basket, being knocked down into the basket stanchion. With three seconds remaining on the game clock, Collins was awarded two free throws and sank the first to tie the score at 49. Just as Collins lifted the ball to begin his shooting motion in attempting the second free throw, the horn from the scorer's table sounded, marking the beginning of a chain of events that would leave the game's final three seconds forever mired in controversy. Although the unexpected sound of the horn caused one of the referees to turn away from the free throw attempt and look over to the scorer's table, play was not stopped. Collins never broke his shooting motion and continued with his second free throw, making it to put the U.S. up by a score of 50–49.

First inbounds play

Immediately following Collins's second free throw, with the ball then being a "live" ball under the rules at that time, Soviet assistant coach Sergei Bashkin charged out of the team's designated bench area, straight to the scorer's table. He asserted that head coach Vladimir Kondrashin
Vladimir Kondrashin
Vladimir Petrovich Kondrashin was a Russian basketball coach....

 had called for a timeout, which should have been awarded prior to that second free throw, but that it had not been granted to them. Since a timeout could not legally be called after the second free throw, however, the Soviet players had to immediately inbound the live ball without a pre-planned play for the final three seconds. They inbounded the ball and began to dribble up the sideline, but the disturbance at the scorer's table led one official to stop play just as the Soviet ballhandler approached mid-court. The game clock was stopped with one second remaining.

When play was stopped, the Soviets pressed their argument about the timeout, with Kondrashin and Bashkin claiming that it had been called as soon as Collins was fouled. By the rules at the time, upon calling such a timeout, Kondrashin would have been able to choose to have it awarded either before the free throws or between the two free throws; he said he had chosen to take it between the two free throws. The game's referees were not aware the Soviets wanted a timeout. Thus, the question of whether Kondrashin truly had signaled for such a timeout remains a matter of dispute.

In his book Serious Fun: A History of Spectator Sports in the U.S.S.R., Robert Edelman, a professor of Soviet history, argued that it was unlikely that Kondrashin, a coach with extensive experience under the specific international rules in place, would have failed to call the questioned timeout. Edelman wrote that the problems originated with confusion among the German staff at the scorer's table, who misunderstood Kondrashin's choice to wait until after the first free throw to have the timeout awarded. According to Edelman, these less-experienced officials mistakenly believed that Kondrashin had changed his mind about calling the timeout altogether, and thus, never notified the referees about it.

The unexplained horn that sounded as Collins was shooting may have happened because the scorer's table had realized the error at the last moment and was attempting to stop the second free throw to award the timeout. Renato William Jones
Renato William Jones
Renato William Jones , also known as R. William, or simply William Jones, was a popularizer of basketball in Europe and in Asia...

, the secretary general of FIBA
International Basketball Federation
The International Basketball Federation, more commonly known as FIBA , from its French name Fédération Internationale de Basketball, is an association of national organizations which governs international competition in basketball...

 at the time, would later assert that the problem had indeed been a human error at the scorer's table which resulted in the timeout request being relayed too late to the on-court officials. The Americans have expressed doubt that the timeout was really called, and have argued that regardless of whether a timeout may have been missed, the ball became live upon Collins' second free throw, and as such, a technical foul
Technical foul
In basketball, a technical foul is any infraction of the rules penalized as a foul which does not involve physical contact during the course of play between players on the court, or is a foul by a non-player. The most common technical foul is for unsportsmanlike conduct...

 should have been assessed against the Soviets because their coach left the designated bench area during live play.

According to referee Renato Righetto
Renato Righetto
Renato Righetto was a Brazilian basketball referee. He was an architect by his main occupation. He refereed over 800 international basketball games from 1960 to 1977...

, ultimately, the official decision was not to grant the Soviet timeout. Collins has also confirmed that officially, the timeout was not awarded, which meant that Collins' second free throw counted and that neither team was to be allowed to substitute players when play resumed.

However, even without being granted an official timeout, the lengthy delay to determine how to proceed had still given the Soviet coaches time to confer with their players and devise a planned inbounds play. Furthermore, although Bashkin's actions had caused the game to be stopped with one second remaining on the clock, the officials decided neither to resume play from that point, nor to assess a technical foul against him for having interrupted the play. They instead wiped out the play altogether, ruling that the entire inbounds sequence would be replayed from the point immediately following the second free throw and that the game clock would thus be reset to three seconds. Jones came down from the stands to the court to contribute to the officials' ruling and he insisted upon a complete replay of the final three seconds. According to Hans Tenschert, the game's official scorekeeper, Righetto had initially declared that play would resume with just one second remaining, only to be overruled by Jones. Jones later acknowledged that under the Olympic regulations, he had no authority to make rulings about a game in progress.

Second inbounds play

The players were brought back into position for a second inbounds play, and the referees, failing to notice that the scorer's table was still working on getting the game clock set to three seconds, gave the ball to Soviet inbounder Ivan Edeshko
Ivan Edeshko
Ivan Ivanovich Edeshko is a retired Belarusian professional basketball player who won gold with the Soviet national team in the 1972 Olympics, in which his all court inbound pass led to Alexander Belov's game-winning basket with no time left in the gold medal game against the American national...

 to start play. At this point, the scoreboard clock was actually showing 50 seconds remaining.

Edeshko was defended at the end line by American center Tom McMillen. With his frame, McMillen aggressively challenged Edeshko's inbounds attempt, making it difficult for Edeshko to pass the ball into play. Edeshko ultimately made only a short pass to teammate Modestas Paulauskas
Modestas Paulauskas
Modestas Paulauskas is a retired Lithuanian basketball player who won gold with the Soviet basketball team in the 1972 Olympic basketball tournament. He also won a bronze medal with the team at the 1968 Summer Olympics. Paulauskas trained at VSS Žalgiris in Kaunas. He is known as one of the best...

 standing in the Soviet backcourt. Paulauskas then immediately launched a length-of-the-court pass toward Soviet center Aleksandr Belov
Aleksandr Belov
Alexander Alexandrovich Belov was a Soviet basketball player who won gold with the Soviet basketball team in Basketball at the 1972 Summer Olympics, scoring the winning basket in the gold medal game.He was the star player of Spartak Leningrad, leading the club to the Soviet national league title...

 near the American basket. But the horn sounded after only one second, with the pass barely out of Paulauskas's hand. The pass then missed its mark and was uneventfully tipped off of the backboard. The referee's premature instruction to begin play caused the American television broadcast to miss most of the play, as its active camera shot at the moment the ball was inbounded had been a close-up of the scoreboard as the game clock was being adjusted. The Soviet broadcast, however, had kept its active camera shot on the court and thus captured video of the entire play.

With confusion still reigning from the previous stoppage in play — as he announced the events live, American television broadcaster Frank Gifford
Frank Gifford
Francis Newton "Frank" Gifford is a Hall of Fame former American football player and American sportscaster.-Early life:Gifford was born in Santa Monica, California, the son of Lola Mae and Weldon Gifford, an oil driller....

 confessed to being "totally confused" as to what the officials had ruled — relatively few observers understood definitively that three seconds were supposed to have been on the clock at the time of the inbounds pass. Therefore, most who were present took no significant notice of the fact that the horn had sounded well before three seconds of play had elapsed, nor of the fact that the game clock had been showing a nonsensical 50 seconds at the time of the play. The players, the announcers of both television broadcasts, and the majority of the spectators in the arena all interpreted the sound of the horn, combined with the sight of a failed Soviet pass, as the end of the game. People flooded the court and the U.S. team began a joyful celebration of its apparent one-point victory. As it turned out, however, the quick horn had actually been the scorer's table's attempt to stop play, since they had not yet completed the reset of the clock.

With Jones still involved in the process, the officials once again ordered the court to be cleared, the players to be brought back into position, the clock to be reset, and the final three seconds be replayed. Furious over the decision to deny the U.S. victory and allow the Soviets yet a third inbounds play, the U.S. coaches briefly considered unilaterally declaring the game to be over by pulling their team off of the floor. However, head coach Hank Iba was concerned that such an action would leave the U.S. vulnerable to a Soviet appeal, which might lead to a ruling that the U.S. had forfeited the game. Iba reportedly told his coaching staff, "I don't want to lose this game later tonight, sitting on my butt."

Third inbounds play

On the third inbound try, McMillen was again assigned to use his height to challenge Edeshko's inbound pass. However, as official Artenik Arabadjian prepared to put the ball into play, he gestured to McMillen. McMillen responded by backing several feet away from Edeshko, which gave Edeshko a clear view and unobstructed path to throw a long pass down the court. McMillen later said that Arabadjian had instructed him to back away from Edeshko. McMillen said that despite the fact that there was no rule which would require him to do so, he decided to comply, fearing that if he did not, the referees might impart a punishment to the American team. For his part, Arabadjian has denied that his gesture was intended to instruct McMillen to back away from Edeshko.

In any event, McMillen's repositioning left no American defender to challenge Edeshko's pass. Unlike the previous play, where he had been forced to make a short pass into the backcourt, Edeshko now had a clear line to throw the ball the length of the court himself toward Aleksandr Belov. The images of the play broadcast on American television by the ABC network
ABC Network
ABC Network may refer to any of the following:*American Broadcasting Company, a private television network in the United States.*Asahi Broadcasting Corporation, regional radio and television broadcaster in Japan....

 (top at right) have led to the question of whether Edeshko might have stepped on the end line — meaning that he should have been called for a violation — as he made his pass. However, the camera shot used in the Soviet broadcast of the same play had a field of view more tightly focused on Edeshko than was ABC's camera. That broadcast's images (bottom at right) therefore allow examination of the step in question at a higher resolution and better show the red paint of the baseline area visible between the white edge of Edeshko's shoe and the white end line.

As Edeshko's pass came down, Belov and the USA's Kevin Joyce
Kevin Joyce (basketball)
Kevin Francis Joyce is a retired American basketball player.A 6'3" guard, Joyce played at the University of South Carolina. During the 1971 ACC Tournament championship game, he out-jumped North Carolina's 6-10 Lee Dedmon with seconds left to tap the ball to a wide open Tom Owens under the basket...

 and Jim Forbes
James Forbes (basketball)
James Forbes is a former American basketball player. His collegiate career at the University of Texas at El Paso was crowned by his membership on the U.S. national team in the 1972 Olympics, which won a silver medal under circumstances that remain controversial to this day.-References:...

 all leapt for the ball near the basket. Belov caught the ball in the air, and as the three men landed, Joyce's momentum carried him out of bounds, while Forbes came down off-balance and fell to the floor beneath the basket. Belov then gathered himself and made an uncontested layup, scoring the winning points as the horn sounded for the last time.

United States protest

At the end of the game, Righetto refused to sign the official scoring sheet in an act of protest. The U.S. team immediately filed a protest, which was heard by FIBA's five-member jury of appeal. The jury ultimately voted down the protest and awarded the gold medals to the Soviet team. However, in announcing the decision, the jury's chairman, Ferenc Hepp
Ferenc Hepp
Dr. Ferenc Hepp was a basketball administrator. He is considered "the father of Hungarian basketball". He became the president of the Hungarian Basketball Federation in 1954 and was a member of the FIBA Central Board in the 1950s and 1960s. He was enshrined into the Naismith Memorial Basketball...

 of Hungary, steadfastly refused to provide the specifics of the vote count, acknowledging only that the decision was not unanimous. Tenschert angrily dissented with the ruling, declaring, "Under FIBA rules, the United States won." The outcome of the vote, combined with Hepp's withholding of its details, fueled American speculation that the decision had been a 3-2 vote, based more upon Cold War
Cold War
The Cold War was the continuing state from roughly 1946 to 1991 of political conflict, military tension, proxy wars, and economic competition between the Communist World—primarily the Soviet Union and its satellite states and allies—and the powers of the Western world, primarily the United States...

 politics than upon the rules of basketball, with the jurors from Puerto Rico and Italy voting to uphold the American protest, while the jurors from the Soviet-allied nations of Hungary, Cuba and Poland voted to deny it. Although this speculated voting breakdown has often been reported as fact, the only one with definitive knowledge of the secret ballot was Hepp, who died in 1980, having maintained his refusal to divulge the specific votes of any of the panel members, beyond acknowledging that his own vote was in favor of the Soviets. In any event, the U.S. players did not accept the jury's verdict, voting unanimously to refuse their silver medals, and the team did not attend the medal ceremony.

After the conclusion of the games, the United States Olympic Committee
United States Olympic Committee
The United States Olympic Committee is a non-profit organization that serves as the National Olympic Committee and National Paralympic Committee for the United States and coordinates the relationship between the United States Anti-Doping Agency and the World Anti-Doping Agency and various...

 (USOC) launched another appeal, this time to the executive committee of the International Olympic Committee
International Olympic Committee
The International Olympic Committee is an international corporation based in Lausanne, Switzerland, created by Pierre de Coubertin on 23 June 1894 with Demetrios Vikelas as its first president...

 (IOC). The USOC was again unsuccessful, although in the report compiled for the appeal, it received the support of Righetto, who was quoted saying the Soviet victory was "completely irregular, and outsides the rules of the game of basketball". Righetto criticized Jones's insistence that the clock be reset to three seconds, and offered that he felt it would have been more fair to have instead resumed play with only the one second on the clock that had been remaining when play was suspended. Righetto also asserted that the initial confusion was partially attributable to a language barrier, as he, a Brazilian, spoke Portuguese, but those working the scorer's table spoke only German.

Group B

Qualified for the semifinals
Team Pts
7 0 639 479 +230 14
5 2 547 471 +76 12 1W–1L 1.072
5 2 582 484 +98 12 1W–1L 1.013
5 2 570 531 +39 12 1W–1L 0.917
3 4 482 518 −36 10
2 5 520 536 −16 9
1 6 526 666 −140 8
0 7 405 586 −181 7

Medal bracket

Classification brackets

5th–8th Place
9th–12th Place
13th–16th Place

Forfeited match.

Gold Medal Match controversy

The 1972 Olympic men's basketball gold medal game was one of the most controversial in Olympic history and was the first ever loss for Team USA since the sport began Olympic play in 1936. The United States team won the previous seven gold medals and was favored to win another in Munich for the 1972 Summer Olympics
1972 Summer Olympics
The 1972 Summer Olympics, officially known as the Games of the XX Olympiad, were an international multi-sport event held in Munich, West Germany, from August 26 to September 11, 1972....

. The team convincingly won its first eight games of the tournament putting its overall Olympic record at 63–0 and setting up a final against the Soviet Union.

With the U.S. team trailing 49–48, American guard Doug Collins
Doug Collins
Paul Douglas "Doug" Collins is a retired American basketball player, a former four-time NBA All-Star and currently the head coach of the NBA's Philadelphia 76ers.-High school and college:...

 stole a Soviet pass at halfcourt and was fouled hard by Zurab Sakandelidze
Zurab Sakandelidze
Zurab Aleksandrovich Sakandelidze was a Georgian basketball player who won gold with the Soviet basketball team in Basketball at the 1972 Summer Olympics. He trained at Dynamo club in Tbilisi....

 as he drove toward the basket, being knocked down into the basket stanchion. With three seconds remaining on the game clock, Collins was awarded two free throws and sank the first to tie the score at 49. Just as Collins lifted the ball to begin his shooting motion in attempting the second free throw, the horn from the scorer's table sounded, marking the beginning of a chain of events that would leave the game's final three seconds forever mired in controversy. Although the unexpected sound of the horn caused one of the referees to turn away from the free throw attempt and look over to the scorer's table, play was not stopped. Collins never broke his shooting motion and continued with his second free throw, making it to put the U.S. up by a score of 50–49.

First inbounds play

Immediately following Collins's second free throw, with the ball then being a "live" ball under the rules at that time, Soviet assistant coach Sergei Bashkin charged out of the team's designated bench area, straight to the scorer's table. He asserted that head coach Vladimir Kondrashin
Vladimir Kondrashin
Vladimir Petrovich Kondrashin was a Russian basketball coach....

 had called for a timeout, which should have been awarded prior to that second free throw, but that it had not been granted to them. Since a timeout could not legally be called after the second free throw, however, the Soviet players had to immediately inbound the live ball without a pre-planned play for the final three seconds. They inbounded the ball and began to dribble up the sideline, but the disturbance at the scorer's table led one official to stop play just as the Soviet ballhandler approached mid-court. The game clock was stopped with one second remaining.

When play was stopped, the Soviets pressed their argument about the timeout, with Kondrashin and Bashkin claiming that it had been called as soon as Collins was fouled. By the rules at the time, upon calling such a timeout, Kondrashin would have been able to choose to have it awarded either before the free throws or between the two free throws; he said he had chosen to take it between the two free throws. The game's referees were not aware the Soviets wanted a timeout. Thus, the question of whether Kondrashin truly had signaled for such a timeout remains a matter of dispute.

In his book Serious Fun: A History of Spectator Sports in the U.S.S.R., Robert Edelman, a professor of Soviet history, argued that it was unlikely that Kondrashin, a coach with extensive experience under the specific international rules in place, would have failed to call the questioned timeout. Edelman wrote that the problems originated with confusion among the German staff at the scorer's table, who misunderstood Kondrashin's choice to wait until after the first free throw to have the timeout awarded. According to Edelman, these less-experienced officials mistakenly believed that Kondrashin had changed his mind about calling the timeout altogether, and thus, never notified the referees about it.

The unexplained horn that sounded as Collins was shooting may have happened because the scorer's table had realized the error at the last moment and was attempting to stop the second free throw to award the timeout. Renato William Jones
Renato William Jones
Renato William Jones , also known as R. William, or simply William Jones, was a popularizer of basketball in Europe and in Asia...

, the secretary general of FIBA
International Basketball Federation
The International Basketball Federation, more commonly known as FIBA , from its French name Fédération Internationale de Basketball, is an association of national organizations which governs international competition in basketball...

 at the time, would later assert that the problem had indeed been a human error at the scorer's table which resulted in the timeout request being relayed too late to the on-court officials.Associated Press
Associated Press
The Associated Press is an American news agency. The AP is a cooperative owned by its contributing newspapers, radio and television stations in the United States, which both contribute stories to the AP and use material written by its staff journalists...

. (1972, September 11). "U.S. cagers won't take silver medal for losers", Telegraph-Herald
The Americans have expressed doubt that the timeout was really called, and have argued that regardless of whether a timeout may have been missed, the ball became live upon Collins' second free throw, and as such, a technical foul
Technical foul
In basketball, a technical foul is any infraction of the rules penalized as a foul which does not involve physical contact during the course of play between players on the court, or is a foul by a non-player. The most common technical foul is for unsportsmanlike conduct...

 should have been assessed against the Soviets because their coach left the designated bench area during live play.

According to referee Renato Righetto
Renato Righetto
Renato Righetto was a Brazilian basketball referee. He was an architect by his main occupation. He refereed over 800 international basketball games from 1960 to 1977...

, ultimately, the official decision was not to grant the Soviet timeout. Collins has also confirmed that officially, the timeout was not awarded, which meant that Collins' second free throw counted and that neither team was to be allowed to substitute players when play resumed.

However, even without being granted an official timeout, the lengthy delay to determine how to proceed had still given the Soviet coaches time to confer with their players and devise a planned inbounds play. Furthermore, although Bashkin's actions had caused the game to be stopped with one second remaining on the clock, the officials decided neither to resume play from that point, nor to assess a technical foul against him for having interrupted the play. They instead wiped out the play altogether, ruling that the entire inbounds sequence would be replayed from the point immediately following the second free throw and that the game clock would thus be reset to three seconds. Jones came down from the stands to the court to contribute to the officials' ruling and he insisted upon a complete replay of the final three seconds. According to Hans Tenschert, the game's official scorekeeper, Righetto had initially declared that play would resume with just one second remaining, only to be overruled by Jones. Jones later acknowledged that under the Olympic regulations, he had no authority to make rulings about a game in progress.

Second inbounds play

The players were brought back into position for a second inbounds play, and the referees, failing to notice that the scorer's table was still working on getting the game clock set to three seconds, gave the ball to Soviet inbounder Ivan Edeshko
Ivan Edeshko
Ivan Ivanovich Edeshko is a retired Belarusian professional basketball player who won gold with the Soviet national team in the 1972 Olympics, in which his all court inbound pass led to Alexander Belov's game-winning basket with no time left in the gold medal game against the American national...

 to start play. At this point, the scoreboard clock was actually showing 50 seconds remaining.

Edeshko was defended at the end line by American center Tom McMillen. With his frame, McMillen aggressively challenged Edeshko's inbounds attempt, making it difficult for Edeshko to pass the ball into play. Edeshko ultimately made only a short pass to teammate Modestas Paulauskas
Modestas Paulauskas
Modestas Paulauskas is a retired Lithuanian basketball player who won gold with the Soviet basketball team in the 1972 Olympic basketball tournament. He also won a bronze medal with the team at the 1968 Summer Olympics. Paulauskas trained at VSS Žalgiris in Kaunas. He is known as one of the best...

 standing in the Soviet backcourt. Paulauskas then immediately launched a length-of-the-court pass toward Soviet center Aleksandr Belov
Aleksandr Belov
Alexander Alexandrovich Belov was a Soviet basketball player who won gold with the Soviet basketball team in Basketball at the 1972 Summer Olympics, scoring the winning basket in the gold medal game.He was the star player of Spartak Leningrad, leading the club to the Soviet national league title...

 near the American basket. But the horn sounded after only one second, with the pass barely out of Paulauskas's hand. The pass then missed its mark and was uneventfully tipped off of the backboard. The referee's premature instruction to begin play caused the American television broadcast to miss most of the play, as its active camera shot at the moment the ball was inbounded had been a close-up of the scoreboard as the game clock was being adjusted. The Soviet broadcast, however, had kept its active camera shot on the court and thus captured video of the entire play.

With confusion still reigning from the previous stoppage in play — as he announced the events live, American television broadcaster Frank Gifford
Frank Gifford
Francis Newton "Frank" Gifford is a Hall of Fame former American football player and American sportscaster.-Early life:Gifford was born in Santa Monica, California, the son of Lola Mae and Weldon Gifford, an oil driller....

 confessed to being "totally confused" as to what the officials had ruled — relatively few observers understood definitively that three seconds were supposed to have been on the clock at the time of the inbounds pass. Therefore, most who were present took no significant notice of the fact that the horn had sounded well before three seconds of play had elapsed, nor of the fact that the game clock had been showing a nonsensical 50 seconds at the time of the play. The players, the announcers of both television broadcasts, and the majority of the spectators in the arena all interpreted the sound of the horn, combined with the sight of a failed Soviet pass, as the end of the game. People flooded the court and the U.S. team began a joyful celebration of its apparent one-point victory. As it turned out, however, the quick horn had actually been the scorer's table's attempt to stop play, since they had not yet completed the reset of the clock.

With Jones still involved in the process, the officials once again ordered the court to be cleared, the players to be brought back into position, the clock to be reset, and the final three seconds be replayed. Furious over the decision to deny the U.S. victory and allow the Soviets yet a third inbounds play, the U.S. coaches briefly considered unilaterally declaring the game to be over by pulling their team off of the floor. However, head coach Hank Iba was concerned that such an action would leave the U.S. vulnerable to a Soviet appeal, which might lead to a ruling that the U.S. had forfeited the game. Iba reportedly told his coaching staff, "I don't want to lose this game later tonight, sitting on my butt."

Third inbounds play

On the third inbound try, McMillen was again assigned to use his height to challenge Edeshko's inbound pass. However, as official Artenik Arabadjian prepared to put the ball into play, he gestured to McMillen. McMillen responded by backing several feet away from Edeshko, which gave Edeshko a clear view and unobstructed path to throw a long pass down the court. McMillen later said that Arabadjian had instructed him to back away from Edeshko. McMillen said that despite the fact that there was no rule which would require him to do so, he decided to comply, fearing that if he did not, the referees might impart a punishment to the American team. For his part, Arabadjian has denied that his gesture was intended to instruct McMillen to back away from Edeshko.

In any event, McMillen's repositioning left no American defender to challenge Edeshko's pass. Unlike the previous play, where he had been forced to make a short pass into the backcourt, Edeshko now had a clear line to throw the ball the length of the court himself toward Aleksandr Belov. The images of the play broadcast on American television by the ABC network
ABC Network
ABC Network may refer to any of the following:*American Broadcasting Company, a private television network in the United States.*Asahi Broadcasting Corporation, regional radio and television broadcaster in Japan....

 (top at right) have led to the question of whether Edeshko might have stepped on the end line — meaning that he should have been called for a violation — as he made his pass. However, the camera shot used in the Soviet broadcast of the same play had a field of view more tightly focused on Edeshko than was ABC's camera. That broadcast's images (bottom at right) therefore allow examination of the step in question at a higher resolution and better show the red paint of the baseline area visible between the white edge of Edeshko's shoe and the white end line.

As Edeshko's pass came down, Belov and the USA's Kevin Joyce
Kevin Joyce (basketball)
Kevin Francis Joyce is a retired American basketball player.A 6'3" guard, Joyce played at the University of South Carolina. During the 1971 ACC Tournament championship game, he out-jumped North Carolina's 6-10 Lee Dedmon with seconds left to tap the ball to a wide open Tom Owens under the basket...

 and Jim Forbes
James Forbes (basketball)
James Forbes is a former American basketball player. His collegiate career at the University of Texas at El Paso was crowned by his membership on the U.S. national team in the 1972 Olympics, which won a silver medal under circumstances that remain controversial to this day.-References:...

 all leapt for the ball near the basket. Belov caught the ball in the air, and as the three men landed, Joyce's momentum carried him out of bounds, while Forbes came down off-balance and fell to the floor beneath the basket. Belov then gathered himself and made an uncontested layup, scoring the winning points as the horn sounded for the last time.

United States protest

At the end of the game, Righetto refused to sign the official scoring sheet in an act of protest. The U.S. team immediately filed a protest, which was heard by FIBA's five-member jury of appeal. The jury ultimately voted down the protest and awarded the gold medals to the Soviet team. However, in announcing the decision, the jury's chairman, Ferenc Hepp
Ferenc Hepp
Dr. Ferenc Hepp was a basketball administrator. He is considered "the father of Hungarian basketball". He became the president of the Hungarian Basketball Federation in 1954 and was a member of the FIBA Central Board in the 1950s and 1960s. He was enshrined into the Naismith Memorial Basketball...

 of Hungary, steadfastly refused to provide the specifics of the vote count, acknowledging only that the decision was not unanimous. Tenschert angrily dissented with the ruling, declaring, "Under FIBA rules, the United States won." The outcome of the vote, combined with Hepp's withholding of its details, fueled American speculation that the decision had been a 3-2 vote, based more upon Cold War
Cold War
The Cold War was the continuing state from roughly 1946 to 1991 of political conflict, military tension, proxy wars, and economic competition between the Communist World—primarily the Soviet Union and its satellite states and allies—and the powers of the Western world, primarily the United States...

 politics than upon the rules of basketball, with the jurors from Puerto Rico and Italy voting to uphold the American protest, while the jurors from the Soviet-allied nations of Hungary, Cuba and Poland voted to deny it. Although this speculated voting breakdown has often been reported as fact, the only one with definitive knowledge of the secret ballot was Hepp, who died in 1980, having maintained his refusal to divulge the specific votes of any of the panel members, beyond acknowledging that his own vote was in favor of the Soviets. In any event, the U.S. players did not accept the jury's verdict, voting unanimously to refuse their silver medals, and the team did not attend the medal ceremony.

After the conclusion of the games, the United States Olympic Committee
United States Olympic Committee
The United States Olympic Committee is a non-profit organization that serves as the National Olympic Committee and National Paralympic Committee for the United States and coordinates the relationship between the United States Anti-Doping Agency and the World Anti-Doping Agency and various...

 (USOC) launched another appeal, this time to the executive committee of the International Olympic Committee
International Olympic Committee
The International Olympic Committee is an international corporation based in Lausanne, Switzerland, created by Pierre de Coubertin on 23 June 1894 with Demetrios Vikelas as its first president...

 (IOC). The USOC was again unsuccessful, although in the report compiled for the appeal, it received the support of Righetto, who was quoted saying the Soviet victory was "completely irregular, and outsides the rules of the game of basketball". Righetto criticized Jones's insistence that the clock be reset to three seconds, and offered that he felt it would have been more fair to have instead resumed play with only the one second on the clock that had been remaining when play was suspended. Righetto also asserted that the initial confusion was partially attributable to a language barrier, as he, a Brazilian, spoke Portuguese, but those working the scorer's table spoke only German.

Group B

Qualified for the semifinals
Team Pts
7 0 639 479 +230 14
5 2 547 471 +76 12 1W–1L 1.072
5 2 582 484 +98 12 1W–1L 1.013
5 2 570 531 +39 12 1W–1L 0.917
3 4 482 518 −36 10
2 5 520 536 −16 9
1 6 526 666 −140 8
0 7 405 586 −181 7

Medal bracket

Classification brackets

5th–8th Place
9th–12th Place
13th–16th Place

Forfeited match.

Gold Medal Match controversy

The 1972 Olympic men's basketball gold medal game was one of the most controversial in Olympic history and was the first ever loss for Team USA since the sport began Olympic play in 1936. The United States team won the previous seven gold medals and was favored to win another in Munich for the 1972 Summer Olympics
1972 Summer Olympics
The 1972 Summer Olympics, officially known as the Games of the XX Olympiad, were an international multi-sport event held in Munich, West Germany, from August 26 to September 11, 1972....

. The team convincingly won its first eight games of the tournament putting its overall Olympic record at 63–0 and setting up a final against the Soviet Union.

With the U.S. team trailing 49–48, American guard Doug Collins
Doug Collins
Paul Douglas "Doug" Collins is a retired American basketball player, a former four-time NBA All-Star and currently the head coach of the NBA's Philadelphia 76ers.-High school and college:...

 stole a Soviet pass at halfcourt and was fouled hard by Zurab Sakandelidze
Zurab Sakandelidze
Zurab Aleksandrovich Sakandelidze was a Georgian basketball player who won gold with the Soviet basketball team in Basketball at the 1972 Summer Olympics. He trained at Dynamo club in Tbilisi....

 as he drove toward the basket, being knocked down into the basket stanchion. With three seconds remaining on the game clock, Collins was awarded two free throws and sank the first to tie the score at 49. Just as Collins lifted the ball to begin his shooting motion in attempting the second free throw, the horn from the scorer's table sounded, marking the beginning of a chain of events that would leave the game's final three seconds forever mired in controversy. Although the unexpected sound of the horn caused one of the referees to turn away from the free throw attempt and look over to the scorer's table, play was not stopped. Collins never broke his shooting motion and continued with his second free throw, making it to put the U.S. up by a score of 50–49.

First inbounds play

Immediately following Collins's second free throw, with the ball then being a "live" ball under the rules at that time, Soviet assistant coach Sergei Bashkin charged out of the team's designated bench area, straight to the scorer's table. He asserted that head coach Vladimir Kondrashin
Vladimir Kondrashin
Vladimir Petrovich Kondrashin was a Russian basketball coach....

 had called for a timeout, which should have been awarded prior to that second free throw, but that it had not been granted to them. Since a timeout could not legally be called after the second free throw, however, the Soviet players had to immediately inbound the live ball without a pre-planned play for the final three seconds. They inbounded the ball and began to dribble up the sideline, but the disturbance at the scorer's table led one official to stop play just as the Soviet ballhandler approached mid-court. The game clock was stopped with one second remaining.

When play was stopped, the Soviets pressed their argument about the timeout, with Kondrashin and Bashkin claiming that it had been called as soon as Collins was fouled. By the rules at the time, upon calling such a timeout, Kondrashin would have been able to choose to have it awarded either before the free throws or between the two free throws; he said he had chosen to take it between the two free throws. The game's referees were not aware the Soviets wanted a timeout. Thus, the question of whether Kondrashin truly had signaled for such a timeout remains a matter of dispute.

In his book Serious Fun: A History of Spectator Sports in the U.S.S.R., Robert Edelman, a professor of Soviet history, argued that it was unlikely that Kondrashin, a coach with extensive experience under the specific international rules in place, would have failed to call the questioned timeout. Edelman wrote that the problems originated with confusion among the German staff at the scorer's table, who misunderstood Kondrashin's choice to wait until after the first free throw to have the timeout awarded. According to Edelman, these less-experienced officials mistakenly believed that Kondrashin had changed his mind about calling the timeout altogether, and thus, never notified the referees about it.

The unexplained horn that sounded as Collins was shooting may have happened because the scorer's table had realized the error at the last moment and was attempting to stop the second free throw to award the timeout. Renato William Jones
Renato William Jones
Renato William Jones , also known as R. William, or simply William Jones, was a popularizer of basketball in Europe and in Asia...

, the secretary general of FIBA
International Basketball Federation
The International Basketball Federation, more commonly known as FIBA , from its French name Fédération Internationale de Basketball, is an association of national organizations which governs international competition in basketball...

 at the time, would later assert that the problem had indeed been a human error at the scorer's table which resulted in the timeout request being relayed too late to the on-court officials.Associated Press
Associated Press
The Associated Press is an American news agency. The AP is a cooperative owned by its contributing newspapers, radio and television stations in the United States, which both contribute stories to the AP and use material written by its staff journalists...

. (1972, September 11). "U.S. cagers won't take silver medal for losers", Telegraph-Herald
The Americans have expressed doubt that the timeout was really called, and have argued that regardless of whether a timeout may have been missed, the ball became live upon Collins' second free throw, and as such, a technical foul
Technical foul
In basketball, a technical foul is any infraction of the rules penalized as a foul which does not involve physical contact during the course of play between players on the court, or is a foul by a non-player. The most common technical foul is for unsportsmanlike conduct...

 should have been assessed against the Soviets because their coach left the designated bench area during live play.

According to referee Renato Righetto
Renato Righetto
Renato Righetto was a Brazilian basketball referee. He was an architect by his main occupation. He refereed over 800 international basketball games from 1960 to 1977...

, ultimately, the official decision was not to grant the Soviet timeout. Collins has also confirmed that officially, the timeout was not awarded, which meant that Collins' second free throw counted and that neither team was to be allowed to substitute players when play resumed.

However, even without being granted an official timeout, the lengthy delay to determine how to proceed had still given the Soviet coaches time to confer with their players and devise a planned inbounds play. Furthermore, although Bashkin's actions had caused the game to be stopped with one second remaining on the clock, the officials decided neither to resume play from that point, nor to assess a technical foul against him for having interrupted the play. They instead wiped out the play altogether, ruling that the entire inbounds sequence would be replayed from the point immediately following the second free throw and that the game clock would thus be reset to three seconds. Jones came down from the stands to the court to contribute to the officials' ruling and he insisted upon a complete replay of the final three seconds. According to Hans Tenschert, the game's official scorekeeper, Righetto had initially declared that play would resume with just one second remaining, only to be overruled by Jones. Jones later acknowledged that under the Olympic regulations, he had no authority to make rulings about a game in progress.

Second inbounds play

The players were brought back into position for a second inbounds play, and the referees, failing to notice that the scorer's table was still working on getting the game clock set to three seconds, gave the ball to Soviet inbounder Ivan Edeshko
Ivan Edeshko
Ivan Ivanovich Edeshko is a retired Belarusian professional basketball player who won gold with the Soviet national team in the 1972 Olympics, in which his all court inbound pass led to Alexander Belov's game-winning basket with no time left in the gold medal game against the American national...

 to start play. At this point, the scoreboard clock was actually showing 50 seconds remaining.

Edeshko was defended at the end line by American center Tom McMillen. With his frame, McMillen aggressively challenged Edeshko's inbounds attempt, making it difficult for Edeshko to pass the ball into play. Edeshko ultimately made only a short pass to teammate Modestas Paulauskas
Modestas Paulauskas
Modestas Paulauskas is a retired Lithuanian basketball player who won gold with the Soviet basketball team in the 1972 Olympic basketball tournament. He also won a bronze medal with the team at the 1968 Summer Olympics. Paulauskas trained at VSS Žalgiris in Kaunas. He is known as one of the best...

 standing in the Soviet backcourt. Paulauskas then immediately launched a length-of-the-court pass toward Soviet center Aleksandr Belov
Aleksandr Belov
Alexander Alexandrovich Belov was a Soviet basketball player who won gold with the Soviet basketball team in Basketball at the 1972 Summer Olympics, scoring the winning basket in the gold medal game.He was the star player of Spartak Leningrad, leading the club to the Soviet national league title...

 near the American basket. But the horn sounded after only one second, with the pass barely out of Paulauskas's hand. The pass then missed its mark and was uneventfully tipped off of the backboard. The referee's premature instruction to begin play caused the American television broadcast to miss most of the play, as its active camera shot at the moment the ball was inbounded had been a close-up of the scoreboard as the game clock was being adjusted. The Soviet broadcast, however, had kept its active camera shot on the court and thus captured video of the entire play.

With confusion still reigning from the previous stoppage in play — as he announced the events live, American television broadcaster Frank Gifford
Frank Gifford
Francis Newton "Frank" Gifford is a Hall of Fame former American football player and American sportscaster.-Early life:Gifford was born in Santa Monica, California, the son of Lola Mae and Weldon Gifford, an oil driller....

 confessed to being "totally confused" as to what the officials had ruled — relatively few observers understood definitively that three seconds were supposed to have been on the clock at the time of the inbounds pass. Therefore, most who were present took no significant notice of the fact that the horn had sounded well before three seconds of play had elapsed, nor of the fact that the game clock had been showing a nonsensical 50 seconds at the time of the play. The players, the announcers of both television broadcasts, and the majority of the spectators in the arena all interpreted the sound of the horn, combined with the sight of a failed Soviet pass, as the end of the game. People flooded the court and the U.S. team began a joyful celebration of its apparent one-point victory. As it turned out, however, the quick horn had actually been the scorer's table's attempt to stop play, since they had not yet completed the reset of the clock.

With Jones still involved in the process, the officials once again ordered the court to be cleared, the players to be brought back into position, the clock to be reset, and the final three seconds be replayed. Furious over the decision to deny the U.S. victory and allow the Soviets yet a third inbounds play, the U.S. coaches briefly considered unilaterally declaring the game to be over by pulling their team off of the floor. However, head coach Hank Iba was concerned that such an action would leave the U.S. vulnerable to a Soviet appeal, which might lead to a ruling that the U.S. had forfeited the game. Iba reportedly told his coaching staff, "I don't want to lose this game later tonight, sitting on my butt."

Third inbounds play

On the third inbound try, McMillen was again assigned to use his height to challenge Edeshko's inbound pass. However, as official Artenik Arabadjian prepared to put the ball into play, he gestured to McMillen. McMillen responded by backing several feet away from Edeshko, which gave Edeshko a clear view and unobstructed path to throw a long pass down the court. McMillen later said that Arabadjian had instructed him to back away from Edeshko. McMillen said that despite the fact that there was no rule which would require him to do so, he decided to comply, fearing that if he did not, the referees might impart a punishment to the American team. For his part, Arabadjian has denied that his gesture was intended to instruct McMillen to back away from Edeshko.

In any event, McMillen's repositioning left no American defender to challenge Edeshko's pass. Unlike the previous play, where he had been forced to make a short pass into the backcourt, Edeshko now had a clear line to throw the ball the length of the court himself toward Aleksandr Belov. The images of the play broadcast on American television by the ABC network
ABC Network
ABC Network may refer to any of the following:*American Broadcasting Company, a private television network in the United States.*Asahi Broadcasting Corporation, regional radio and television broadcaster in Japan....

 (top at right) have led to the question of whether Edeshko might have stepped on the end line — meaning that he should have been called for a violation — as he made his pass. However, the camera shot used in the Soviet broadcast of the same play had a field of view more tightly focused on Edeshko than was ABC's camera. That broadcast's images (bottom at right) therefore allow examination of the step in question at a higher resolution and better show the red paint of the baseline area visible between the white edge of Edeshko's shoe and the white end line.

As Edeshko's pass came down, Belov and the USA's Kevin Joyce
Kevin Joyce (basketball)
Kevin Francis Joyce is a retired American basketball player.A 6'3" guard, Joyce played at the University of South Carolina. During the 1971 ACC Tournament championship game, he out-jumped North Carolina's 6-10 Lee Dedmon with seconds left to tap the ball to a wide open Tom Owens under the basket...

 and Jim Forbes
James Forbes (basketball)
James Forbes is a former American basketball player. His collegiate career at the University of Texas at El Paso was crowned by his membership on the U.S. national team in the 1972 Olympics, which won a silver medal under circumstances that remain controversial to this day.-References:...

 all leapt for the ball near the basket. Belov caught the ball in the air, and as the three men landed, Joyce's momentum carried him out of bounds, while Forbes came down off-balance and fell to the floor beneath the basket. Belov then gathered himself and made an uncontested layup, scoring the winning points as the horn sounded for the last time.

United States protest

At the end of the game, Righetto refused to sign the official scoring sheet in an act of protest. The U.S. team immediately filed a protest, which was heard by FIBA's five-member jury of appeal. The jury ultimately voted down the protest and awarded the gold medals to the Soviet team. However, in announcing the decision, the jury's chairman, Ferenc Hepp
Ferenc Hepp
Dr. Ferenc Hepp was a basketball administrator. He is considered "the father of Hungarian basketball". He became the president of the Hungarian Basketball Federation in 1954 and was a member of the FIBA Central Board in the 1950s and 1960s. He was enshrined into the Naismith Memorial Basketball...

 of Hungary, steadfastly refused to provide the specifics of the vote count, acknowledging only that the decision was not unanimous. Tenschert angrily dissented with the ruling, declaring, "Under FIBA rules, the United States won." The outcome of the vote, combined with Hepp's withholding of its details, fueled American speculation that the decision had been a 3-2 vote, based more upon Cold War
Cold War
The Cold War was the continuing state from roughly 1946 to 1991 of political conflict, military tension, proxy wars, and economic competition between the Communist World—primarily the Soviet Union and its satellite states and allies—and the powers of the Western world, primarily the United States...

 politics than upon the rules of basketball, with the jurors from Puerto Rico and Italy voting to uphold the American protest, while the jurors from the Soviet-allied nations of Hungary, Cuba and Poland voted to deny it. Although this speculated voting breakdown has often been reported as fact, the only one with definitive knowledge of the secret ballot was Hepp, who died in 1980, having maintained his refusal to divulge the specific votes of any of the panel members, beyond acknowledging that his own vote was in favor of the Soviets. In any event, the U.S. players did not accept the jury's verdict, voting unanimously to refuse their silver medals, and the team did not attend the medal ceremony.

After the conclusion of the games, the United States Olympic Committee
United States Olympic Committee
The United States Olympic Committee is a non-profit organization that serves as the National Olympic Committee and National Paralympic Committee for the United States and coordinates the relationship between the United States Anti-Doping Agency and the World Anti-Doping Agency and various...

 (USOC) launched another appeal, this time to the executive committee of the International Olympic Committee
International Olympic Committee
The International Olympic Committee is an international corporation based in Lausanne, Switzerland, created by Pierre de Coubertin on 23 June 1894 with Demetrios Vikelas as its first president...

 (IOC). The USOC was again unsuccessful, although in the report compiled for the appeal, it received the support of Righetto, who was quoted saying the Soviet victory was "completely irregular, and outsides the rules of the game of basketball". Righetto criticized Jones's insistence that the clock be reset to three seconds, and offered that he felt it would have been more fair to have instead resumed play with only the one second on the clock that had been remaining when play was suspended. Righetto also asserted that the initial confusion was partially attributable to a language barrier, as he, a Brazilian, spoke Portuguese, but those working the scorer's table spoke only German.

Aftermath

In the ensuing years, USA Basketball
USA Basketball
USA Basketball is a non-profit organization and the governing body for basketball in the United States. The organization represents the United States in FIBA and the men's and women's national basketball teams in the United States Olympic Committee...

 has periodically contacted the 1972 U.S. team members on behalf of the IOC to offer them the opportunity to change their stance and accept the silver medals, possibly being granted an official ceremony awarding them. In 1992, two of the team members, Tommy Burleson
Tommy Burleson
Tommy Loren Burleson is an American and former collegiate and professional basketball player...

 and Ed Ratleff
Ed Ratleff
William Edward "Easy Ed" Ratleff is a retired American basketball player. He attended Columbus East high school where he led the basketball team to the Ohio State Championship in 1968 and was joined by Dwight "Bo" Lamar to claim the 1969 title.A 6'6" guard/forward from California State...

 told Sports Illustrated
Sports Illustrated
Sports Illustrated is an American sports media company owned by media conglomerate Time Warner. Its self titled magazine has over 3.5 million subscribers and is read by 23 million adults each week, including over 18 million men. It was the first magazine with circulation over one million to win the...

magazine that they would indeed vote to accept their medals. Burleson said about the players' initial vote in 1972 that since he didn't play in the final game, he felt obliged to vote according to the wishes of the players who did. He said, however, that he viewed having played in the Olympics as his greatest accomplishment, felt no bitterness about the outcome, and wanted his children to be able to have his medal. Ratleff said that although he didn't personally want the medal, his wife felt very strongly about his accepting it and being able to show it to their children. He said that his vote would be to accept the medal, but that he was casting his vote that way only in deference to her wishes. The ten remaining team members each told the magazine that they would vote to refuse the acceptance of silver medals.

With regard to awarding the medals, the IOC has insisted that for such an action, the entire team would need to consent unanimously. With that in mind, a few of the ten team members who voted against accepting the silver medals offered that if most of the rest of the team preferred to accept the silver medals, they would grudgingly consent to accept theirs, so that their individual stance would not block the wishes of the majority. Others remained more adamantly opposed, making clear that they would never accept the silver medal under any circumstances. Tom Henderson
Tom Henderson
Thomas Edward "Tom" Henderson is an American former professional basketball player.A tough-minded 6'4" guard from the University of Hawaii, Henderson was selected by the Atlanta Hawks in the first round of the 1974 National Basketball Association Draft...

 said that he felt some of the members of the team were "punking out" in changing their stance against accepting the silver medals. Kenny Davis
Kenneth Davis (basketball)
Kenneth "Kenny" Davis is a former American basketball player. After his collegiate career as a small college All-American at Georgetown College and a short stint with the Marathon Oil AAU team, Davis was named Captain of the U.S. national team in the 1972 Olympics...

 reported that he had gone so far as to have a clause put into his will
Will (law)
A will or testament is a legal declaration by which a person, the testator, names one or more persons to manage his/her estate and provides for the transfer of his/her property at death...

 forbidding his wife, children or descendants from ever accepting the silver medal after his death.

When the IOC chose to resolve the figure skating scandal at the 2002 Winter Olympics
2002 Olympic Winter Games figure skating scandal
At the 2002 Winter Olympics held in Salt Lake City, the figure skating competition was the source of much controversy and one of the immediate causes for the revamp of scoring in figure skating.-The competition:...

 by awarding duplicate gold medals to the original silver medalists, Tom McMillen, who had gone on to become a United States congressman, appealed to the IOC, requesting that the committee revisit its 1972 decision to declare the U.S. team to be the silver medalists of the men's basketball event. The 2002 decision arose because one of the figure skating judges claimed that she had been unduly pressured by the head of one of the sport's governing bodies. The American appeal argued that Jones's unauthorized intervention in 1972 brought similar undue pressure upon the officiating crew of that game.

In recent years, FIBA has instituted more stringent rules for international competitions to attempt prevention of similar incidents again:
  • Only the coach may call the time-out.
    • Must be called to the scorer and not the referee.
    • Scorer will stop the clock and signal the time-out upon the dead ball or concession of field goal.
  • A time-out can only be awarded upon:
    • A dead ball
    • When the calling team concedes a field goal.
      • It will not be awarded if the team calling the time-out scores.
  • The game clock must register tenths of seconds in the final minute of a period.
  • Starting in 1992, a duplicate game clock must be on top of the shot clock.
    • As of 2004, the game shot clock must be seen by players and coaches on three sides.
  • A whistle-stop unit must be installed where the officials can stop the clock on the sound of their whistle, as of 2004.
  • As of 2009, the use of instant replay is permitted on last-second shots.

Final Standings

Rank |Team |Pld |W |L
9 9 0
9 8 1
9 7 2
4th 9 5 4
5th 9 7 2
6th 9 6 3
7th 9 5 4
8th 9 4 5
9th 9 5 4
10th 9 3 6
11th 9 4 5
12th 9 3 6
13th 9 3 6
14th 9 2 7
15th 8 0 8
16th 8 0 8

External links

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