MEXICO CITY

MEXICO CITY —Thanks to Mexico, the final leg of Canada’s road to the Rio Olympics will be quite a bit less daunting than it could have been.

The host nation stunned previously unbeaten Argentina 95-83 with a wild fourth quarter comeback on Wednesday night, outscoring them 36-11 in the final frame after a 30-point Argentina third quarter had wiped out a first-half Mexico lead in what turned out to be an epic contest.

As a result, Canada avoids another tough battle against the host in a hostile environment and draws 3-4 Venezuela instead, a huge break. Canada already beat Venezuela 82-62 here, completely wrapping up their punchless opponents while solving them on offence for the first half before slowing down.

Mexico and Argentina, both also 6-1, will now meet in what surely will be a slugfest of a rematch in the late game Friday. One of them will go to Rio, the other, to a last-chance tournament next summer.

Gustavo Ayon was fantastic for Mexico, finishing with 38 points, 14 rebounds and four blocks. He played all but about 30 seconds of the game. Though Argentina beat Canada in the tournament opener, the tiebreaker was point differential in the games between those three teams and Canada soundly beat Mexico.

Meanwhile, earlier in the day, Canada put on another offensive clinic in a 120-103 win over the Dominican Republic, then had to wait for the nightcap to figure out its opponent. Not that there was a preference.

“It doesn’t matter who we play,” Kelly Olynyk said.

“We’re going to have to beat somebody to get to where we want and we knew that going in. Somebody’s going to have to play us.”

And what a team Venezuela will be facing. Since getting a self-declared “wakeup call” by losing to Argentina in the tournament opener, Canada has run roughshod over opponents. The Dominican became the second team to score 100 points in a game here — Canada has done it five times.

Canada’s offence has looked terrorizing at times here over the past week or so, but the start Wednesday was simply ridiculous.

Canada came out locked and loaded, led by an unlikely source of long-distance excellence.

Anthony Bennett, who had been just 3-for-11 on three-pointers heading in, canned his first four threes, and Canada started a preposterous 8-for-8 from deep before Brady Heslip finally missed one with about 30 seconds to go in the first quarter.

It was 36-18 after that quarter and Canada had 65 points on 62% shooting (including 11-of-15 from three) by the half.

The Dominican Republic looked quite a bit better in the second half offensively and fought to hang around, but this was easily the biggest snorefest of the tournament so far. The mascot was wearing pyjamas, the press was not, but could be excused for napping through much of the proceedings.

Cory Joseph led the way on Wednesday with 17 points and seven assists, Bennett and Nik Stauskas added 14, Olynyk 13 and Andrew Wiggins and Aaron Doornekamp tallied 12.

Canada scored 58 points in the paint, shot 57% from the field and ended up shooting 14-for-25 (56%) from three. The team is now up to 44% from three for the tournament. Nobody here can stop them if they operate at anywhere close to that efficiency on Friday.

That said, what’s happening at the other end of the floor is a concern.

The Dominican outscored Canada 31-24 in the fourth quarter – the second game in a row that’s happened – and by a point in the second half, while shooting 50% for the game with 17 made threes and 32 points in the paint.

“It is unusual. We pride ourselves on defence this whole tournament,” Olynyk said of the lapses. “We’ve been pretty good this whole tournament on defence so we’re going to have to take this day off and get rest, get our legs back because we’ve got one game to do what we came to do this summer.”

Head coach Jay Triano was a little more forgiving a day after looking quite displeased about Canada’s shaky play down the stretch against Mexico following another strong start.

“This is a tough game to play. It’s a tough turnaround, we played an emotional game last night, our legs are a little bit tired, but we didn’t do a very good job of keeping guys in front of us and we’re going to have to do that regardless of who we play in the next game,” Triano said. “So that’s a little bit of a cause for concern, but at the same time, we have a couple days now. Playing in the early game today is a detriment, but it’s also a benefit because we have the rest of today, we have tomorrow and most of the day to get ready for the game that we’ve had pencilied in for a long, long time.”

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