Australia’s women’s basketball team have begun their World Cup campaign in Germany with an entertaining 70-54 win over Puerto Rico.<\/p>\n
The Opals were pushed throughout by their opponents in the Group C opener in Berlin.<\/p>\n
Steph Talbot was superb for Australia, earning the player-of-the-game award after posting 19 points, eight rebounds and three assists.<\/p>\n
Ezi Magbegor also reached double figures in scoring with 11 points and led the way on the boards with nine.<\/p>\n
Alanna Smith starred with 10 points and eight rebounds but left the court during the game with what looked like a lower left-leg injury.<\/p>\n
Jade Melbourne chipped in with 10 points, while Zitina Aokuso and Isobel Borlaise had six each to help get the job done on day one of competition.<\/p>\n
Arella Guirantes (14 points), Trinity San Antonio (11) and Imani McGee-Stafford (11) were Puerto Rico’s top scorers.<\/p>\n
Ranked third in the world behind the USA and France, the Opals were unbeaten in qualifying and crowned Asia Cup champions in 2025.<\/p>\n
They have won medals in three of the past four World Cups since winning gold in Brazil 20 years ago.<\/p>\n
They claimed silver in Spain in 2018, as well as bronze in T\u00fcrkiye four years earlier and again on home soil in 2022.<\/p>\n
The Opals face world number 16 T\u00fcrkiye on Sunday and fifth-ranked Belgium the following day.<\/p>\n
AAP<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Australia’s women’s basketball team have begun their World Cup campaign in Germany with an entertaining 70-54 win over…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":880175,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[574],"tags":[149116,64,63,726,149112,293953,11261,41634,85,449446,7062,21418],"class_list":["post-880174","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-basketball","tag-alanna-smith","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-basketball","tag-ezi-magbegor","tag-jade-melbourne","tag-opals","tag-puerto-rico","tag-sports","tag-steph-talbot","tag-womens-basketball","tag-world-cup"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/880174","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=880174"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/880174\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/880175"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=880174"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=880174"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=880174"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}