Big hearts and tough minds are laudable qualities in athletes ? they can do wonders to help the less skilled overcome their limitations.

But on the biggest night of the summer, with all next summer on the line too, the Canadian national basketball team, with big-hearted, tough-minded athletes all through it, simply could not make up for its physical failings.

Dropping passes and missing shots and letting opponents get free on the boards at both ends of the floor, the Canadians saw their hopes of an appearance at next year's Athens Olympics dashed in a 79-66 loss to Puerto Rico.

"I don't know, maybe we ran out of gas, maybe we just overachieved early but we weren't good enough to qualify this time," said Steve Nash, who suffered through a 2-for-13 shooting night.

The hosts join the United States and Argentina as Olympic qualifiers from the FIBA-Americas tournament here, leaving Canada on the sidelines as it was in Barcelona in 1992 and Atlanta in 1996, a streak interrupted only by its seventh-place finish in Sydney in 2000.

Not only will Canada now not compete in Athens ? the third time in the last four Olympics that they've missed the Games ? but there will be serious questions to be answered about the direction of the program.