China: France shock USA in Basketball World Cup quarter-final

M/S Players walking through mixed zone after United States-France FIBA quarter final Basketball World Cup, Dongguan
M/S Players walking
SOT, Joe Harris, USA player: "We know how much each guy sacrificed, calm and spare, you know we are at 39 days away from home right now, You know, we spend a lot of time together, like I said earlier, you know you built up a special bond with these guys. At the end of the day all that really matters is the opinion in that locker room and you know, it's tough for us, everybody is hurt right now, for sure. We obviously, you know, we want to come out here, compete. Compete for a gold medal but, you know, we don't have anything to necessarily hang our heads about. We still, we played our asses off, we played hard. We made a lot of mental mistakes."
W/S USA press conference
SOT, Donovan Mitchell, USA player: "For us it is not about who is not here, I have been saying that for a while, you guys are going to do your thing, but we have 12 guys who want to compete for America, just like every other country. It sucks that some of our country people don't feel that way about us. But we don't care, we wanted to compete, and we did."
W/S Mix-zone
SOT, Gregg Popovich, USA Head Coach: "Anyway, you guys didn't have this guy and that guy, that is disrespectful to France and whoever else is in the tournament. France beat us, it doesn't matter who was on the team, I couldn't be more proud of these 12 guys who sacrificed their summer to come here, having never played together before. They put themselves in the arena and competed and they deserve credit for that. Just like France deserves credit for winning. It is not about 'well the United States did not have their other guys.' There is no such thing as 'other guys', these are the guys that were here, and they did a great job and I am very proud of them."
W/S USA leaving press conference
SOT, Vincent Collet, France coach: "Five years ago, we made something similar against Spain in (the) quarter final and I think we have been too much happy to replay the semi-final, we took 15 minutes to start it and we do not want to make the same mistakes. As I said, we are really focused for the next game because we know how good Argentina is."
W/S France press conference
SOT, Rody Gobert, France player: "We don't just want to be in semi-final, we want to win the goal and nothing is going to be easy, it (is) probably going to get even harder, but we have the mental strength to, you know, to accomplish that and also we are always going to be there for one another."
W/S Mix-zone
SOT, Nicolas Batum, France player, (French): "Feels like we did this five years ago and we did a monumental mistake, and now, it's what I was talking about with Evan [Fournier], what I was talking about with the guys, it's no joy. We don't show anything because we didn't do anything. Ok, we beat the Americans but we just won a quarter final. We beat the Spanish, we had a not so great game against Serbia, we are missing a great opportunity. [inaudible], it's what I was talking about with Evan [Fournier], it has been five years that we've been waiting for this. Here, we had a big quarter [final] against a big team, we accomplished the feat, but we did not do anything. We have no medal around our neck, no qualification yet to the Olympic Games, we have nothing. We have nothing. So we have to remain focused. Now we can be happy. Like I said [when we were playing?] against Australia, we can be disappointed until midnight, at one past midnight we move on to something else. Same here, we can be happy, at one past midnight we move on to Argentina."
W/S Mixed zone
M/S Dongguan World Cup sign
SCRIPT
Holders the USA suffered a shock 89-79 loss to France in the quarter-finals of the FIBA Basketball World Cup in the Chinese city of Dongguan on Wednesday.
During the post-match conference US Head Coach Gregg Popovich criticised the media for focussing on players not in the squad.
"That is disrespectful to France and whoever else is in the tournament. France beat us, it does not matter who was on the team, I couldn't be more proud of these 12 guys who sacrificed their summer to come here, having never played together before," Popovich said.
His opposite number Vincent Collet vowed to avenge defeat in the semi-final five years ago. His side lost out to Serbia that day, although they have a chance to put the pain behind them when they face Argentina on Friday.