Canada faces three of the world’s top teams in final tuneup for Rio

TORONTO — Before Canada’s women’s basketball team steps on the court at the Rio Olympics, they’ll test themselves against the best in the world.

The Canadians will play the world No. 1-ranked Americans, No. 2 Australia and No. 4 France in three exhibition games this week in the U.S.

“We’ll get exposed by these teams, which is great,” said Canada’s head coach Lisa Thomaidis. “You want that. We don’t want to go in with any false sense of security that we’re playing great right now, because we aren’t. We’re playing OK, and we’re going to keep getting better as the (Olympic) tournament approaches.”

The Rio-bound Canadians held their final day of practice Monday at Ryerson University’s Mattamy Athletic Centre. The past few days have been a chance for Thomaidis to work two players back into the fold: Natalie Achonwa, a forward with the WNBA’s Indiana Fever, and Kia Nurse, who returned to practice last Friday after having surgery to repair a sports hernia.

“Kia’s coming back from having not played for a few months, and she’s surprisingly adjusting pretty well,” Thomaidis said of Nurse, who had surgery shortly after her sophomore season at Connecticut.  “She’s young and she’s such a great athlete, it’s not going to take her very long. And we still have a bit of time before we need her to be at the level that we’re accustomed to her playing at.”

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The 12-player roster announced in a ceremony last Friday is identical to the squad that captured gold at last summer’s Pan American Games. It features seven players from the 2012 Olympic squad that reached the quarter-finals in London, and five Olympic rookies.

The Canadians are coming off a successful off-season that saw them go 4-1 in a European exhibition series, and 3-0 in a friendly tournament against China in Edmonton.

The difference now is that, with the Aug. 5 opening ceremonies barely a week away, teams will be at full strength. Thomaidis doesn’t plan to completely show her team’s hand though. 

“I think every team will hold a little bit back, you don’t want to have too much scouted before heading to Rio,” Thomaidis said. “But from our standpoint again, from having two players that we need to get integrated, we’re going to have to show most of our stuff. But we’ll certainly have some things in our back pocket.”

The players were in good spirits at Monday morning’s practice. A six-year-old girl, dressed in basketball shorts and a Canada hoodie, watched the practice with her dad through the glass door of the gym. The team spotted the girl and invited her in, including into their post-practice huddle. She shot hoops with the team staff, and eventually left with a piece of paper full of player autographs.

The Canadians face Australia on Wednesday in Newark, then the U.S. on Friday in Bridgeport, Conn., and finally France on Sunday at New York’s Madison Square Garden.

Canada is in Group B in Rio with the U.S., Spain, Senegal, Serbia and China. They open the Olympics on Aug. 6 versus China.

Lori Ewing, The Canadian Press