The Canadian Women’s Basketball team rode a dominant performance from Kia Nurse, pouring in a game high 33 points on 59% shooting to defeat the United States 81 – 73 on Monday night and win the Pan Am Gold Medal at the Mattamy Athletic Centre (formerly known as Maple Leaf Gardens). Consider that the next highest scorer on either team was American Breanna Stewart who had just 17 points, and you can see what a huge impact Nurse had on the game, and the tournament overall.

Kia Nurse leads Canadian Women to Pan Am Basketball Gold

Things were not looking good for the Canadians early as they faced some tough defence, and shots weren’t dropping. This led to the Americans having a 23-13 lead at the end of the first quarter.

The tide would turn in the middle stages of the game though, with Canada going on a run at the end of the second quarter to have the game tied at the half. Nurse and the Canadians then came out firing in the third quarter and took a 62-51 lead into the final quarter.

While the Americans would make a late rally, Team Canada would hold on by riding some tough defence down the stretch, including a 39-35 overall rebounding edge, a 6-2 edge in blocked shots, and holding the Americans to just 41% shooting to take the game. It didn’t hurt that the team enjoyed the tremendous support of a partisan home town crowd to win Canada’s first ever Basketball Gold at the Pan Am Games, for either men or women.

Main Photo Credit: Kevin Gamble / Last Word on Sports, All Rights Reserved.