The Russian women’s national team suffered a narrow defeat to Australia in a wamr-up game for the Olympics on Sunday.
Overturning the 61-50 Russian win in the first match Saturday, Australia recovered strongly from an early Russian lead to win 74-72.
Russia started the match with a flurry of scores to go 15-4 ahead before the Australians pegged the score back to 21-16 in Russia’s favor at the end of the first quarter.
In the second and third, Australia gradually whittled away Russia’s advantage, with the score 38-34 at the halfway point and 56-55 at the end of the third quarter.
Australia took the lead for the first time five minutes into the final quarter and led by four points with 60 seconds on the clock, which turned out to be too much ground for the Russians to make up.
At the Olympics, Russia will play Australia, Brazil, Britain and two other teams, to be determined at the qualification tournament in Turkey, which runs from June 25 through July 1.
