Dre Diary

Sixers' Andre Iguodala is keeping an exclusive diary for the Daily News at the World Championships. The latest entry comes after Team USA's 99-77 win over Slovenia in a Group B preliminary game played before a pro-Slovenia crowd. The U.S. team is now 2-0 and faces Brazil today (2:30 p.m., ESPN). Iguodala had 11 points against Slovenia on 5-for-7 shooting, with four rebounds and two assists.

I think their fans were great. It was good that we got that type of crowd. They were really cheering for them the whole way . . . 40 minutes . . . it was good to go against that. Those guys play hard. They continued to play the whole game. Once we apply the pressure, the game takes care of itself.

Defensively, to start the game, from tip, we really got after it, got some steals, got some deflections. We really wanted to extend our defense and make them push their offense out a little further than they are accustomed to. That really disrupted them.

We had 12 turnovers in the first [half] and we were still up 12, 14 points. We figured we'd come out in the second half, apply the same pressure and cut the turnovers down. We have to be careful with the traveling. You're going full speed and you catch the ball, it's hard to just stop. We'll adjust to the rules and get it done.

[Brazil] has some tough players. They've got [Leandro] Barbosa, obviously, and [Anderson] Varejao, NBA guys. Barbosa's their go-to guy. We're going to try to key in on him a little bit. Obviously, he's been in the league for 8 years so he has some experience in the NBA and international play. I'm sure they want to upset us.

I feel like we still have some ways to go, but these next three games will be good for us to try to continue to work on the little things.