U.S. women qualify for Olympic 3×3 basketball, U.S. men eliminated

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The U.S. women's 3x3 basketball team featuring WNBA players qualified for the Olympic Games on Sunday, while the U.S. men's team was eliminated in the quarterfinals.

Kelsey Plum, Katie Lou Samuelson, Stefanie Dolson and Allisha Gray led the U.S. women's team to a top-three finish in the eight-nation qualifying tournament in Graz, Austria.

A less heralded men's team, led by former All-Big Ten Purdue forward Robbie Hummel, fell to the Netherlands 21-16.

Hummel played alongside Dominique Jones, Kareem Maddox and Joey King in the tournament, who all have never played in an NBA regular-season game. Active NBA players do not compete in international competition and were not going to be on the Olympic team if the U.S. men qualified. 

In 2017, 3x3 basketball was added as an official Olympic sport for the Tokyo Games. The half-court games are played with a 12-second shot clock and end after 10 minutes or if a team scores 21 points. Made shots are one point and shots from beyond the arc are two points.

This is the first time that the U.S. has failed to qualify for an Olympic men's or women's basketball event. The Americans have qualified for all 32 traditional Olympic basketball tournaments (although they did not compete in the 1980 Moscow Games due to the U.S. Olympic team's boycott).

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