South Sudan is the 33rd-ranked team in the FIBA world rankings, by far the lowest of the 12 nations that will be vying for men’s basketball gold in the Paris Olympics that start this week.
The United States is ranked No. 1.
South Sudan nearly beat the Americans anyway.
The every-four-years wake-up call for the U.S. Olympic team seems to have arrived. A 101-100 win over South Sudan on Saturday in London came on a day when plenty went wrong…