HAMBURG, GERMANY — When playing the athletic and deeply talented USA under 17 Men’s World Championship Team, it’s pick your poison. You can focus on shutting down the red, white and blue’s inside game and hope for an off shooting night. Or you can extend out on the USA shooters and hope your inside men can contain the USA bigs.

Australia elected to try and stop the U.S. inside game and guard Brad Beal (Chaminade College Prep H.S. / St. Louis, Mo.) made them pay in a big way, scoring a game high 25 points on a sizzling 7-of-9 shooting performance from behind the 3-point arc and the USA improved to 6-0 with a dominating 105-70 victory over Australia (3-3) Friday night.

The win advanced the USA U17 squad into Saturday’s U17 World Championship medal round semifinal against Canada, who defeated China 102-96 earlier in the afternoon to move on. Winners of the two semifinal games advance to play in Sunday’s gold medal game, with the semifinals losers meeting in the bronze medal game.

“Canada is a very good team,” said USA head coach Don Showalter about the USA’s semifinal opponent. “They are probably as athletic as any team we’ll play here. We kind of know them from last year and it’s going to be a very interesting game. I think they’re going to give us some problems just from the standpoint of their athleticism, because we really haven’t played against that yet.

“The keys are going to be if we can control the boards and our guard play. They have an outstanding point guard as obviously we do, but between our guards and their guards I think whoever controls the game will come out the winner.”

The U.S. quickly established control in its game versus Australia. Tied 8-8, the USA’s James McAdoo (Norfolk Christian H.S. / Norfolk, Va.) tallied five points and Chasson Randle (Rock Island H.S. / Rock Island, Ill.) and Adonis Thomas (Melrose H.S. / Cordova, Tenn.) each connected on a three as the Americans posted a 14-0 run over just 2:25 to take charge 22-8 with 3:19 yet to go in the opening quarter.

Carrying a comfortable 28-16 lead into the second period, the Americans expanded their advantage to 36-21. But Australia, in a last gasp, reeled off eight straight points to tighten the contest to 36-28 with 4:09 left before intermission.

“I thought we really came together in the third quarter. You look at Brad Beal’s line, then you also look at Quinn Cook’s and he had seven assists and I’d say six of those were to Brad. We did a great job of finding the player that was hot,” Showalter added. I was really pleased with our rebounding as well, we had 54 to 33. Andre Drummond had a really good game on the glass, Adonis Thomas had a nice game too, and I thought Johnny O’Bryant had one of his better effort games today. I thought he really got in there and mixed it up. Of course you can’t forget James McAdoo who is just really solid.”

In addition to Beal’s 25 points, James McAdoo finished with 17 points on flawless 8-for-8 shooting, and collected nine rebounds in just 18 minutes. Tony Wroten, Jr. (Garfield H.S. / Seattle, Wash.) was credited with 11 points, seven assists and three steals, Marquis Teague (Pike H.S. / Indianapolis, Ind.) finished with 10 points and a game best eight assists, and André Drummond (St. Thomas More School / Middletown, Conn.) had a productive evening with a double-double of 10 points and a game best 12 boards in only 14 minutes of action. Michael Gilchrist, a UK commit like Teague, had five points and three rebounds in 12 minutes.

“You know every time he (Beal) touches the ball it’s going in,” said USA guard Cook who recorded seven assists in his 15 minutes. “I was just trying to pull the defense to me, shoot the gaps, and his man kept leaving him for some odd reason and I kept finding him and he kept knocking them down.

In Friday’s other medal round quarterfinal round play, Canada (5-1) advanced to the medal round semifinals after knocking off China (3-3) 102-96; Lithuania (5-1) kept rolling and its gold medal hopes alive with a 74-61 win over host Germany (3-3); and Poland (6-0) remains undefeated after pounding Serbia (1-5) 100-70.

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