By Eurohoops team/ info@eurohoops.net
Croatia, playing on home soil and coming from a dramatic loss to Greece after having won their opening game against Slovenia, crushed FYROM 73-55.
After a pretty even first half the Croatians managed to claim the lead and slowly extend it to 10 by the end of the third period. FYROM – who suffered a heavy defeat by Greece on the opening day of the tournament but managed to overcome the Netherlands on day 2 – couldn’t prevent their opponents from extending the gap some more in the fourth, and ended up losing the contest with an 18-point deficit.
“Today we had a very bad start to the game,” Croatia’s coach, Velimir Perasovic, commented after the game. “We worked very hard in the first two quarters, but we didn’t have the consistency on defernse in the first half. Everything changed in the second half when we played better defense. It made things easy in the end.”
Dario Saric got the most for his team, scoring 15 points, collecting 7 rebounds and dishing 4 assists. Ante Tomic was a monster on the boards grabbing 9 rebounds, and scoring 10 on the side, nearly competing a double-double. Bojan Bogdanovic finished the game with a solid 13 points, 6 rebounds and 3 assists, and Krunoslav Simon provided some valuable assistance with 12 points, 4 boards and 5 assists.
For Marijan Srbinovski’s team, Predrag Samardziski was the top scorer with 10 points (which probably says a lot about their overall offensive performance tonight) and 5 rebounds (plus 1 assist). The Stojanovski brothers were not far behind with 9 for Vojdan (3 rebounds, 3 assists) and 9 for Damjan (4 rebounds, 1 assist). Vlado Ilievski added another 7, plus 2 rebounds and 3 assists.
“It was a deserved win,” a disappointed coach Srbinovski said. “We only played 30 minutes today. We opened the game in the first half as we wanted to. We kept the score low but in the second half the Croatians played more aggressive defense and that destroyed our offensive system. The Croatian team is more experienced and a better team than us. We still have chances for the second round against Georgia.”
Croatia v MKD – Group C – Game Highlights – EuroBasket 2015 by FIBA