The United States enters the knockout round of the 2026 FIBA women’s World Cup as one of three teams with perfect records from the group stage. <\/p>\n
Team USA is one of four squads that earned byes into the quarterfinals of the knockout round. <\/p>\n
The second-and-third-place teams from each group will battle on Tuesday and Wednesday in the knockout qualification round. <\/p>\n
Spain, Belgium, France and the United States play their respective quarterfinal games on September 10. <\/p>\n
The semifinals are scheduled for September 12 and the final takes place September 13 in Berlin.<\/p>\n
Hungary vs. Japan (11:45 a.m. ET)<\/p>\n
Germany vs. South Korea (2:45 p.m. ET)<\/p>\n
Italy vs. Australia (11:45 a.m. ET)<\/p>\n
Puerto Rico vs. China (2:45 p.m. ET) <\/p>\n
Spain vs. Italy\/Australia winner<\/p>\n
United States vs. Hungary\/Japan winner<\/p>\n
France vs. Puerto Rico\/China winner<\/p>\n
Belgium vs. Germany\/South Korea winner<\/p>\n
Odds (via FanDuel Sportsbook)<\/p>\n
United States (-350; bet $350 to win $100)<\/p>\n
France (+700; bet $100 to win $700)<\/p>\n
The United States entered the tournament as the clear favorite and nothing has changed after the group stage. <\/p>\n
Team USA won all three of its games, two of which were blowouts. It won a close game over Italy on Sunday. <\/p>\n
Caitlin Clark, Paige Bueckers and Co. will face the Hungary-Japan winner on Thursday to kick off their knockout-round schedule. <\/p>\n
Team USA needs to win three games in Berlin over a four-day span to repeat as world champion. <\/p>\n
France and Belgium, who both went 3-0 in the group stage, are viewed as the two biggest threats to the Americans. <\/p>\n
The assumption is that France and Belgium will meet in the semifinals with an opportunity to play Team USA in the final on the line. <\/p>\n
France owns the deeper roster and it had a more dominant group stage. <\/p>\n
The French squad should be the favorite in a potential semifinal meeting with Belgium.<\/p>\n
A USA-France final would give fans the highest quality of championship game to watch. <\/p>\n
Team USA has the best roster in the tournament and anything other than a title would be viewed as a huge disappointment.<\/p>\n
Prediction: USA over France in Championship Game<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The United States enters the knockout round of the 2026 FIBA women’s World Cup as one of three…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":883919,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[574],"tags":[64,63,726,85],"class_list":["post-883918","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-basketball","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-basketball","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/883918","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=883918"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/883918\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/883919"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=883918"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=883918"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=883918"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}