James Robinson won another gold medal with Team USA on Sunday. This time, his U19 team brought home a gold after defeating Serbia, 82-68. It's no surprise the game was fairly close. Serbia also gave Team USA its greatest challenge earlier in the tournament when the Americans won by only nine, 71-62. According to the box score, Robinson played only two minutes and went scoreless in the final.
Robinson didn't play all that well offensively in the tournament but getting the experience was still a cool thing. One thing I mentioned before was that he struggled to shoot the ball early in the tournament and unfortunately, that was a theme throughout.
Over the nine games, Robinson was only 8-31 from the field, making under 26% of his shots. That was the worst out of anyone on the team by a significant margin - no one else was under 30%. It wasn't all bad for Robinson and his 19 assists were second-most on the team. Still, I'm not encouraged to see his shooting percentage so bad considering that was a problem last year, too.
As I've said before, Pitt doesn't need him to do a ton of scoring. Simply running the offense while keeping turnovers down will suffice for the most part. But what Pitt can't afford is him to be an absolute bricklayer from outside not forcing defenses to remain honest and allow them to double team other options.
That's even truer this season with the loss of a primary scoring option in Tray Woodall. The Panthers have other guys that can help pick up the slack in scoring, but they need Robinson to at least knock down shots when he's left open.
But, hey - winning a gold medal was the primary goal for the team and Robinson continues his label of being a winner.
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