Men’s Olympic Basketball: Russia, Spain Early Winners, USA Downs Tunisia

If you look at the standings, things in Group B of the Olympic men’s basketball tournament have gone according to plan. Australia, China and Great Britain are each 0-2. Now they’ll fidget among one another for the group’s final knockout bid and a summary hoop execution from Team USA in the quarterfinals. Meanwhile, Russia, Spain and Brazil are all 2-0, as expected. They’ll now battle for the No. 1 seed in the group, also known as the You Don’t Have To Meet Team USA Until The Gold Medal Game, Should You Get There card.

There’s one little problem, and it is that while Russia has looked nothing short of spectacular and while Spain has been strong if not quite perfect, Brazil has been a pretty big flop. An undefeated, tied-for-first-place flop, yes. But a flop nonetheless. Brazil opened the tournament with a four-point win over Australia ... a team that Spain on Tuesday beat by 12 despite treating much of the fourth like garbage time. On Tuesday, Brazil edged hosts Great Britain by five points. Britain had lost to Russia by 20 on Sunday and hasn’t won an Olympic game since 1948.

In its second game of the London 2012 Olympics, the United States men’s basketball team is heavy favored over Tunisia, the lowest-ranked team that it will face in group play, and likely the lowest ranked team it will face in the entire tournament. Tunisia scored just 56 points in a 60-56 loss to Nigeria in its first game, which might have killed off any chance it had of pulling off an upset top-four finish in Group A.

United States vs. Tunisia is the last basketball game of the day and is scheduled to tip off at 5:15 p.m. ET, 10:15 local time. The game will be broadcast live on NBC Sports Network, and will also be streamed live at NBCOlympics.com.

The Brazilian men’s national basketball team is a medal contender at the 2012 Olympics. Great Britain, kindly, is not. And yet the Brits gave Brazil all it could handle for most of Brazil’s 67-62 win in group play on Tuesday.

But Brazil held Great Britain to 39 percent shooting from the field, forced 19 British turnovers, and finished the game on an 11-5 run to stave off what would have been the biggest upset in men’s basketball of this Olympics.

The Nigerian national team was unable to make lightning strike twice in its bid at an Olympic medal, unfortunately, as it was unable to upset Lithuania for the second time in less than a month when they matched up in pool play Tuesday morning at the London Olympics.

The two teams stayed fairly close in the first half, but Nigeria’s inability to knock down jumpers -- the African team made just one of their 16 three-point attempts -- eventually did them in as they were unable to recapture the magic that allowed them to defeat Lithuania (and subsequently earn their Olympic berth) at last month’s qualifying tournament.

The Spanish are now 2-0, the Australians are now 0-2. The Boomers are clearly in the bottom three of their group with Great Britain and China -- whichever squad can emerge as the best of those three teams will advance to the group stage.

Then, things started to click for the Spanish, as they would go on to hit seven of their next 11 threes -- four of five from Fernandez, and even a three-ball from the shortened line by Gasol -- to pull away from the Australians. When the shots started falling, everything else starting falling into place as well: Australia tried chucking threes -- tried, they were 3-for-18 at one point after a 4-for-22 performance against Brazil -- and before long, the Spanish had shown their stuff as one of the top teams in the tournament and led by 20.That 20-point lead would shrink to 10 as Australia made a run against some Spanish reserves, but the game was never really in question.

The Russians advance to 2-0 in group play, although against weak competition, while China is 0-2. China will likely need to win two of their final three games against Australia and Great Britain to advance as one of the top four teams in Group B.

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The men’s Olympic basketball tournament continues Tuesday and the United States will be among the teams in action.

The United States will take on Tunisia in the second of five games of group play. Tunisia lost their first game to Nigeria 60-56. Tunisia is the lowest-ranked team among group A, coming into the Olympics ranked No. 32 by FIBA.