France vs. Belgium Olympic Clash: Predictions & Insights
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00:00France-Belgium today. I'm an expert at the backup catcher on the Mariners, Carl, and
00:08I am not an expert at France and Belgium today. France is four and a half point favorites.
00:13They play at three o'clock Eastern today. The total is very low for a women's game here.
00:19143 and a half. My gosh, that does seem super low for a medal game. But again, I don't know
00:25a ton about this. Leaning on you once again here. It seems to me, outside looking in,
00:30a lot of the teams that are at home, France, Paris, seem to be doing very well at the Olympics
00:36at every level. I don't know if it's home cooking here, but it just seems to keep happening.
00:40And that's pretty surprising because, you know, sometimes the home crowd goes against
00:44you. You know, once you don't get a couple calls going your way, that crowd gets frustrated.
00:48They get on the referees and you get out of yourself and start playing out of yourself.
00:52But that hasn't happened for both the men's and women's team. We know the men's are in
00:54the finals. Women's trying to get there with a win today. And honestly, that total is low
00:59to me too, Craig. This is, you know, outside of Team USA, these are two high scoring teams
01:03right now in the Olympic Games, right? They're scoring around, I think it's 73, 70, 75 points
01:09per game, you know, respectively. And they can hit the three, you know, Belgium destroyed
01:15Spain in their quarterfinal matchup by hitting 50% of their threes. You know, we know what
01:21France could do that as well. We know France shoots the ball. Well, I think they shot 40%
01:25in their victory in the quarterfinals. And Marie Johannes had a terrific game, 24 points.
01:30She's going to have to play well again today. So I would go over that total, no question
01:34about it. And then if you're talking about who's going to win this basketball game, it's
01:38going to come down to the three ball, who is hitting their threes. And I think France
01:42getting behind that home crowd, having the guard play that Marie Johannes brings to the
01:46table, Gabby Williams brings to the table. I think that pushes them through. And I know
01:51that Emma Messamann is the best player in the Olympic Games, not playing on Team USA.
01:55In fact, she's the best player in the Olympic Games, not in the WNBA, currently in the WNBA.
02:00So she's the leading scorer of the tournament. She's led Belgium to this point. But I think
02:05France and that, you know, sixth man, which is the crowd, I think that's going to be too much
02:11for Belgium. And they're really going to feel the loss of their guard, Julie Alamond here in
02:15this game. Julie Alamond is a WNBA player. She is one of the co-captains for Belgium.
02:22And she's, you know, at a young age, gets up and down the floor and really forces that tempo.
02:26They're going to miss her today. They haven't missed her so far in the Olympic Games,
02:29but they're going to miss her today going against Marie Johannes. So give me France,
02:32and we're going to have a dual, you know, France-USA matchup in both gold medal games
02:37for men's and women's basketball.