Spanish basketball players have a tough victory against Turkey and first place in subgroup A; Belgium and Montenegro advance to the playoffs

In the duel between the leading teams of the group, the Spaniards defeated Turkey with a score of 72:69 (17:18, 21:16, 18:16, 16:19).

With the score 68-69, the Turks held the defense, but failed to put the ball in play, as it left the field from Shane Larkin. Spain’s offense was fouled on Willy Hernangomez, who made it 71-68 from the free throw line with 18 seconds left in regulation.

Larkin, who threw the first of two “penalties”, was also stopped at the other end of the court with a violation of the rules. The Spaniards got the rebound and eight seconds before the final whistle, Lorenzo Brown provoked a foul and also made one accurate free throw (72:69). The Turks did not get the rebound, which allowed Spain to win.

Hernangomez led the Spanish team with 15 points and seven rebounds, while Brown added 11 points and seven assists.

For the Turks, Jedi Osman had 20 points, Furkan Korkmaz had 16 points, and Alperen Šengin had 14 points, 12 rebounds and three steals. Larkin dished out six assists but settled for three points.

Meanwhile, in another Group A match, Belgium beat Bulgaria 89-80 (20-19, 21-11, 25-30, 23-20).

After a successful play in the last quarter of the third quarter, the Bulgarians managed to reduce the deficit to four points, but shortly after that, the Belgians regained an eight-point lead, which they managed to maintain until the end of the game.

Retin Obasohan had 25 points and seven rebounds for Belgium, while Emmanuel Lecomte added 20 points, four rebounds and three assists.

Aleksandar Vezenkov had a double-double for Bulgaria with 26 points and 13 rebounds, while Dee Bost had 18 points, six rebounds and four assists.

In the last subgroup match, Montenegro defeated Georgia with a score of 81:73 (21:19, 20:16, 17:17, 23:21).

Igors Drobniak scored 22 points for the winners, Kendrick Denard Perry scored 17 points, who also collected nine assists, while Nemanja Radovics stood out with seven points and 11 rebounds.

Ted McFadden, who scored 16 points, and Alexander Mamukelasvili, who scored 15 points and grabbed ten rebounds, did not save Georgia from failure.

In Group A, Spain and Turkey have secured a place in the playoffs, with four and three victories in five matches, respectively. Next, with three wins in five matches, follow respectively Montenegro and Belgium, which have also entered the playoffs. The fifth and sixth places in the group are shared by Bulgaria and Georgia, who managed to get one success in five matches.

After the round-robin matches, the four best teams of each group will enter the playoffs, which will take place in Berlin starting on September 10. The teams of groups A and B, as well as the best teams of groups C and D, will meet in the round of 16.

This is the fourth time that the European Men’s Finals have been played in four different countries.

In 2017, the players of the Slovenian national team became European basketball champions, becoming champions for the first time. Slovenia, which defeated Latvia in the quarter-finals, defeated Serbia in the final. In the fight for third place, Spain beat Russia.

The Latvian national team has participated in the finals of the European Championship 14 times, but this time they failed to qualify for the finals, remaining in the last place in Group H behind Bosnia and Herzegovina, Greece and Bulgaria.

The European Championship takes place from September 1 to 18.

The next European Championship will take place in three years, with Riga hosting one of the subgroups and the elimination tournament.

This final tournament was supposed to take place in 2021, but since the Tokyo Olympic Games were postponed for a year due to the Covid-19 pandemic, the continent’s strongest basketball players are also gathering a year later.