Mongolia beat Team USA in the biggest upset in 3-on-3 basketball history

Plus, the Iceman becomes America penalty saving hero, a Mario Cristobal incident at the women's Eurobasket, and deranged CFL highlights.

We’re right at the butt of the sports calendar. Every sports league’s 2024-25 season is over; every sports league’s 2025-26 season has yet to begin.

You think that’s gonna stop me from telling you about three amazing sports things that happened last week? OF COURSE NOT!

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A Khan-derella Story

The 3x3 World Cup was this past week, and it was held in the 3x3 capital of the world: Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia. And the home team pulled an upset as big as the monumental statue of Genghis Khan overlooking the court.

Genghis, enjoying ball with his buddies.

• The American women’s team at the 3x3 World Cup was STACKED. They were led by Sarah Strong, maybe the best player throughout UConn’s national title run in March. She was joined by LSU’s Mikaylah Williams, Oklahoma’s Sahara Williams, and Creighton’s Morgan Maly, all college stars.

• But these weren’t just random college stars thrown together: Strong and the two unrelated Williamses have been playing 3x3 together for a while, winning back-to-back 3x3 U18 World Cups together in 2022 and 2023. Mikaylah somehow won three straight 3x3 U18 World Cup MVPs, which is honestly unbelievable. She was 16 for the first one and the best player in the tournament!

• But Mongolia loves 3x3. Seriously. When I covered a 3x3 event in LA a few years ago, there were Mongolian fans there to cheer on an all-Mongolian pro team.

• While Mongolia’s 5-on-5 hoops trophy case is as sparsely populated as the country itself, the men’s 3x3 team has won the Asia Cup, and their women’s team qualified for the Tokyo Olympics. So far as I can tell, that’s the only time Mongolia has qualified a squad in any Olympic team sport, ever. (They have lots of medals in individual sports like judo, boxing, and wrestling.)

• In front of a raucous home crowd, the Mongolian women went on an all-time underdog run. They won three games in 3x3’s version of overtime, (where the first team to score two points wins) and a fourth win on a last-second shot against Brazil. They pulled an OT upset over China, a team which has won World Championships and an Olympic bronze, Mongolia’s biggest win over their significantly larger neighbor in about 800 years.

• Here’s Khulan Onolbaatar’s buzzer-baatar against Ukraine. Of course, Mongolia’s game-winning shot was a…

• … wait for it…

• STEPPE-BACK JUMPER!

• That’s probably the best Mongolia-related hoops pun anybody’s ever come up with.

• Wait, I got one more.

• What does a Mongolian basketball player yell when they shoot one of their trademark steppebacks?

• …

• …

• …

• GOBI!!!!!!!!!

• OK, I’m all out.

• The Americans were bigger, stronger, and faster than the Mongolians. But Mongolia did some back-of-the-napkin math and realized two-pointers are worth more than one-pointers. (About twice as much!) Mongolia attempted 24 twos and eight ones, Team USA attempted 23 ones and eight twos.

• Sadly, Mongolia lost in the championship against the Netherlands. But their silver medal has to be one of the greatest Mongolian sports moments ever, and the win over Team USA is being billed as the biggest upset in 3x3's brief history.

• The American men’s team also lost in the quarterfinals, but, like……… that was kinda expected. (I will circle back to my various suggestions for how to fix the American men’s 3x3 program after we properly celebrate Mongolia.)

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Hold up, I’ve got ANOTHER ridiculous international women’s basketball thing

The EuroBasket Women’s gold medal game featured one of the greatest comebacks, one of the biggest chokes, and one of the greatest Announcer Voice Cracks of all time. Belgium ended the game on a 14-0 run, winning the game after Spain threw the ball away when Belgium was simply trying to foul, an error of Mario Cristobal-esque proportions.

(I set this video to start at the beginning of the 14-0 run, the killer turnover in question starts at the 13:00 mark.)

• Even after Belgium scored 11 straight points, Spain was still in control. They had the ball with the lead and the shot clock off. Belgium needed to foul to get the ball back to have a hope of winning. But Spain decided to play keepaway to burn a little bit of extra clock. Point guard Mariona Ortiz threw the ball into the backcourt, allowing Belgium’s Antonia Delaere to scoop-and-score the go-ahead bucket.

• The announcer literally losing his voice on the official international English language stream is pretty good, but I’d also like to recommend the color commentator on Belgium’s French broadcast screaming AH OUI! YAAAAAAAA YAAAAAAASS YAAAAAAAAAA. (My French is rusty, can I get a translation?) The Flemish-language broadcasters were relatively reserved in comparison.

• Belgium has now won two straight Eurobasket championships, incredible stuff for a country which rarely even qualified for major international competitions before their current crop of stars came around. They’ve won two Eurobasket titles and two Eurobasket bronzes since 2017, and finished fourth at the Paris Olympics.

• I have been an Emma Meesseman stan ever since she came out of nowhere to win WNBA Finals MVP in 2019 for the Washington Mystics:

  But Meesseman hasn’t played in the WNBA since 2022, choosing to focus on her commitments to the Belgian national team and her European club play. She won MVP after averaging 19 and 9 for the tournament.

• Belgium’s coach at EuroBasket? Meesseman’s former coach with the Mystics, Mike Thibault, who took the Belgian job this offseason after being fired as Washington’s GM.

• The dynamic between playing in the WNBA and participating in various summer international tournaments has nagged at the W for years… but they’re hoping to fix that in the next CBA by paying the players way more money to stay stateside.

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COOL PAHTY

Team USA has a new hero: MISTER FREEZE.

I’m talking about Matt Freese, the NYCFC goalkeeper who literally saved the USMNT by stopping three penalty kicks in the quarterfinals against Costa Rica.

• Freese was more locked in than any keeper in penalty shootout history. In addition to his three saves, he “guessed” correctly on two other Costa Rican kicks, getting hands on five of six shots.

• Amazingly, Freese has done this before. He also had three penalty saves in a shootout in last year’s MLS Cup playoffs against FC Cincinnati:

• Freese said he considers penalty kicks his specialty. He spent the flight to Minnesota studying Costa Rica’s tendencies, and told reporters that he wrote a “very long research paper” about penalty kicks during his time as a student at…

• ohhh this is gonna be so annoying for the rest of his USMNT career I can just tell….

• HARVARD.

• Did you know Ryan Fitzpatrick went to Harvard?

• Freese’s performance has raised questions about who will be Team USA’s starting keeper for next year’s World Cup. The incumbent is Matt Turner, who had played just about every competitive match since 2021, but was benched for the Gold Cup because manager Maurico Pochettino felt Turner was rusty after riding the bench for his club team, Crystal Palace.

• Easy solution: Let Turner start next year, and if any games get to PKs, put in Freese, so he can put opposing shooters ON ICE.

• I probably should have put Freese’s highlight video first instead of the video of Arnold Schwarzenegger puns from the bworst Batman movie ever, but, look, that video has been on Youtube for 14 years and I have been laughing at it for 13 of those years.

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Quick Hits

• The FIFA Club World Cup has finally answered the questions of what would happen if the team which just won the UEFA Champions League played against the sixth-best team in the MLS’ Eastern Conference: PSG beat Inter Miami 4-0 in the quarterfinals, and that’s only because they decided not to score in the second half.

• German hoops club Ratiopharm Ulm blew a 2-1 lead in the Basketball Bundesliga finals, losing in five games to Bayern Munich… and relatedly, Bulls draft pick Noa Essengue decided to leave the team after Game 3 so he could be in New York City for the NBA Draft. Obviously, getting drafted is a cool experience, but I bet winning the championship would have been fun too! (Bayern might have won anyway—Essengue was a bench player for Ulm, and Munich has reunited the UConn duo of Shabazz Napier and Niels Giffey which won two national titles together.)

• Faith Kipyegon ran the fastest women’s mile in history in Paris… but it kinda felt like a disappointment because Nike hyped the event as an opportunity for Kipyegon to run the first four-minute mile. She missed that mark by almost seven seconds, running a 4.06.92, which is still the fastest time ever. (It doesn’t count as an official world record because it wasn’t an official race—Kipyegon still holds the WR with a 4.07.64.)

  This is why I always try to keep expectations low! Shoot for slightly above the ground, so if you fall it doesn’t hurt that much!

• It is my goal to share deranged CFL highlights with as many people as I can. Here’s Toronto Argonauts rookie Derek Slywka recording a 105-yard scoop-and-score touchdown on Sunday…

  And here’s Slywka, in the same game, returning a blocked field goal 120 yards for another touchdown:

  Slywka had more touchdowns yesterday in this game (two) than in his entire career at Division III Ithaca College (one.)

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On Deck

It’s an incredible time of year for Watching European Sports During The Day.

• Wimbledon started today…

• the women’s Euros in soccer starts Wednesday…

• the Tour de France starts Saturday…

• To counteract this surge of continental goodness, we have Joey Chestnut making his return to the 4th of July Nathan’s Hot Dog Eating Contest. (He missed last year’s contest due to a sponsorship dispute.)