SUMMER GAMES SPOTLIGHT : BARCELONA ’92 OLYMPICS : THESE PIONEERS LOSE THEIR WAY

Nobody said it would be easy, or possible: How could the U.S. women’s basketball team lose?

“No matter how well we play, we’re not running over people, dunking over people,” said Nancy Lieberman-Cline, the former star player who is now a TV commentator.

“We don’t have the physical advantage the men have.

“We’re only on the cutting edge of where we’re going to be. In the tryouts, Lisa Leslie (of USC, later cut) came down in the first three-man weave and dunked it. Nobody could believe it. The greatest players in the history of women’s basketball are sitting there saying, ‘She dunked it!’ ”

Did they buckle under the pressure of their mission: Selling their game to America?

“There is always a lot of pressure,” Lieberman-Cline said. “If you’re at a major college program, you have to worry about playing tough or being ladylike. We still have to play while thinking, ‘Is this going to hurt the game. Will this hurt the image?’

“There’s a lot of responsibility that goes with being pioneers.”

This a daily roundup of Olympic-related items from reporters in Barcelona from the Los Angeles Times, Newsday and Baltimore Sun, all Times-Mirror newspapers.