Australia's luckless Opals have been knocked out of the women's basketball World Cup, their courageous tournament ending in Berlin with an 89-66 hammering by Spain in the quarter-finals and a season-ending injury to their captain Ezi Magbegor.
Without three key players - Magbegor and Alanna Smith through injury and Jade Melbourne with illness - coach Sandy Brondello promised her team, down on numbers and fatigued, would still call on all the fighting spirit that had pushed them into the last eight.
But without their Seattle Storm star Magbegor, who suffered a torn ACL in her right knee during the first quarter of Wednesday's remarkable comeback victory over Italy, the Opals were 19 points down by halftime and there proved no way back.
