BERLIN \u2014 Mali pulled off the first stunner of the Women’s Basketball World Cup by shocking Spain 82-73 on Saturday.<\/p>\n
It was only the second win ever in tournament history for the African country, which beat Senegal in overtime in 2010.<\/p>\n
Mali was down two at the half, but outscored Spain 31-19 in the third quarter to take the lead. Mali went on a 16-4 run in that period after it was down 45-44 to take command. Sika Kone, who finished with 19 points, had two 3-pointers during that game-changing run. Kone, who plays for the Atlanta Dream in the WNBA, also had 10 rebounds.<\/p>\n
Mali (1-1) scored the first five points of the fourth quarter, including another 3-pointer by Kone, to put the game away as Spain could get no closer than nine the rest of the way.<\/p>\n
Djeneba N’Diaye also had 19 points for Mali, which is 2-10 in its World Cup history.<\/p>\n
Iyana Martin scored 20 points for Spain (1-1), which was one of the top teams in the world.<\/p>\n
Host Germany slows down Japan for first win<\/p>\n
Germany got off to a fast start and slowed down Japan in a 74-58 win.<\/p>\n
In front of a sold-out crowd that was loud for the entire game, Germany outscored Japan 28-11 in the first quarter. Japan, which beat Mali 102-97 in its opener Friday, couldn’t find any rhythm against the hosts. A day after hitting a World Cup-record 20 3-pointers, Japan was just 3-for-27 from behind the arc. Two of those makes came in the final 1:38 of the game.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe know Japan shoots more 3s than 2s, so we took away the 3,\u201d said German star Leonie Fiebich. \u201cOur goal was to be physical with them.\u201d<\/p>\n
Frieda Buhner scored 19 points and Nyara Sabally added 18 for Germany (1-1).<\/p>\n
Kokoro Tanaka led Japan (1-1) with 15 points.<\/p>\n
All four teams in Group A are tied at 1-1.<\/p>\n
Hungary holds off Nigeria for first World Cup win in 28 years<\/p>\n
Dorka Juhasz had 19 points and 16 rebounds to help Hungary edge Nigeria 71-67.<\/p>\n
Nigeria (0-2) was down 66-52 with 3:57 left before getting within two with 3 seconds left on Elizabeth Balogun’s basket. Nigeria fouled Reka Lelik with just over a second left and she calmly knocked down both free throws to seal the win.<\/p>\n
It was Hungary’s first victory since 1998 when the team topped China in the quarterfinals. Now they’ll play Korea next to close out pool play.<\/p>\n
Virag Takacs-Kiss added 17 points for Hungary (1-1). Juhasz, who plays for the Minnesota Lynx, had 13 points and 11 rebounds in the first half.<\/p>\n
Amy Okonkwo scored 17 points to lead Nigeria, which finishes off pool play against France.<\/p>\n
France recovers from rough first quarter to rout South Korea<\/p>\n
Marine Johannes scored 14 of her 17 points in the first half as France rallied from a slow start to beat South Korea 95-69 in the final game of the day.<\/p>\n
South Korea (1-1) got off to a hot start and led 31-24 after the first quarter. Then Johannes and France got going, scoring the first 14 points of the second quarter. Johannes had nine of those as the French (2-0) led 43-37 at the half.<\/p>\n
France put the game away at the start of the third quarter with a 24-4 run dominated by Dominique Malonga and Gabby Williams. Malonga had 10 points and Williams nine during that spurt.<\/p>\n
South Korea could never recover.<\/p>\n
Malonga and Williams each finished with 14 points.<\/p>\n
___<\/p>\n
Copyright 2026 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"BERLIN \u2014 Mali pulled off the first stunner of the Women’s Basketball World Cup by shocking Spain 82-73…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":1046707,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[49],"tags":[190457,1339,418952,418953,62,67,132,68,232,21490],"class_list":["post-1046706","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wnba","tag-awa-fam","tag-basketball","tag-maite-cazorla","tag-raquel-carrera-quintana","tag-sports","tag-united-states","tag-unitedstates","tag-us","tag-wnba","tag-world-cup"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/117223600086371176","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1046706","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1046706"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1046706\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1046707"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1046706"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1046706"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1046706"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}