Paris, France (Aug. 31, 2024) — The Netherlands’ wheelchair women’s basketball team has become a titan in the sport. The Dutch have emerged victorious in recent European championships, the last two world championships, and the Tokyo 2020 Paralympics. The Netherlands began the Paris 2024 Games in dominating fashion, dismantling Japan 87-34.

With that, Team USA was staring at quite the uphill battle when it matched up with the Netherlands on Saturday. Though the U.S. jumped to an early six-point lead, the Dutch proved too strong. The Netherlands outlasted Team USA 69-56.

The offensive prowess of Mariska Beijer made life very tough on the U.S. The now-four-time Paralympian tallied 34 points on 16/23 shooting, snatching 12 rebounds too.

“We let her (Beijer) get away from us a bit,” explained Rose Hollerman, competing in her fourth Paralympics. “It’s just hard offensively when they’re scoring every single time to come down and set up a good offense and find our looks.”

“I think we just kind of went cold and shooting and just letting Mariska (Beijer) get into the middle too much,” remarked Becca Murray, Team USA captain. “We just have to be a little bit tougher on her.”

The U.S. built a 10-4 lead three minutes in, but the Netherlands didn’t take long to respond. The Dutch rallied for ten straight to take a four-point lead. From there, the first half remained tight-knit, and the Netherlands held that exact edge at the break. It grew early in the third quarter- the Dutch began the frame on a 12-6 run. Team USA never got within single digits again as the Netherlands held a lead as large as 23 before a late run cut the deficit to ten.

“I think the score doesn’t reflect how close we are,” stated Hollerman. “It’s a great learning opportunity for us so we can take that and try to, like go watch film and learn from what happened today.”

“I told some of the girls, I don’t think the score reflects how close we are to them,” said Murray. “We were only down by four at halftime, we’re right there, we just have to clean up the little things.”

The loss drops the U.S. to 1-1 in group play with one game to go. Team USA wraps up group play against Japan at 1:45 PM France time on Monday. The Japanese lost to this same Dutch team by 53 points. Even though Japan may not same as intimidating as the Netherlands on paper, the U.S. isn’t taking this match lightly and knows there’s plenty of room for improvement.

“We’re just, like trying to focus on ourselves,” proclaimed Hollerman. “Get back to what we know we’re good at, which is playing team basketball and moving the ball around and finding open looks, and then defensively, playing with each other, communicating all the time.”

“Just being a little bit more aggressive on chairs,” said Murray. “I think we played a little bit hesitant with their physicality and speed, so just coming out and knowing the defense that we can play.”