Remember when the U.S. men’s basketball team beat Nigeria 156-73 at the London Olympics?
They’ve got nothing on the Russian women’s team at the World University Games.
Russia beat Mongolia 123-23 at the Games in Kazan, Russia, earlier this week. The 100-point margin of victory matches the Olympic record set in two separate men’s games at the 1948 London Olympics (if exhaustive researching is correct).
The World University Games are what you’d guess, an international multi-sports event (every two years) featuring athletes between the ages of 17 and 24 who are or have been college students in the last year.
It’s not quite the Olympics -- chess is one of the “sports” at the World University Games.
Some stats from Russia’s 123-23 win over Mongolia:
• Russia led 31-10 after the first quarter. Mongolia didn’t score in the third quarter.
• More than half of Mongolia’s points came from one player -- Solongo Bayasgalan (12 points). Nobody else made more than one basket.
• Russia’s leading scorer -- Lyubov Paskalenko -- outscored Mongolia 24-23.
• Mongolia shot 8-for-51 (16 percent) from the field.
• Russia forced 41 Mongolia turnovers, including 29 on steals.
• Mongolia lost by 74 and 73 points in its next two games.
In the 1948 Olympics, Iraq lost to China 125-25 and South Korea 120-20. Neither China nor South Korea made it past the quarterfinals, leading one to wonder what the gold-medal winning Americans would have done against Iraq had they played.
The U.S. men’s basketball team at the World University Games features 2013 first-team All-American Doug McDermott (Creighton) and Final Four Most Outstanding Player Luke Hancock (Louisville).
Their results: wins over United Arab Emirates (140-46), Czech Republic (96-53) and Sweden (83-65) and losses to Australia (93-84) and Canada (94-85). The loss to Canada on Friday knocked the U.S. out of medal contention.
The U.S. women’s team has scored more than 100 points in each of its first four games to make the semifinals. Their margins of victory over Mali, the Czech Republic, Brazil and Sweden were 88, 40, 30 and 31.
They’re led by 2013 first-team All-American Odyssey Sims (Baylor) and second-team All-American Kaleena Mosqueda-Lewis (UConn).
Thousands of defective medals recalled at World University Games