By Nikos Varlas / varlas@eurohoops.net
Italy was unstoppable in the third quarter and decimated Israel 52-82 to easily qualify to the quarter-finals. Head coach, Simone Pianigiani, was delighted afterwards:
“We did a great job from the beginning, focused on the game plan. We didn’t give them easy points in transition. I am really proud of the players to come back into the top eight of Europe. The first round pushed up to play at the top level immediately.”
One of the reasons why the Italians easily claimed the victory was Alessandro Gentile’s amazing performance. The Italian forward, who scored 27 points on 8/12 shooting, said afterwards: “We did a really great job approaching the game in a physical way and keeping them to 52 points was really good.”
On the other hand, Israel played very well in the tournament, but they suffered a bitter elimination at the end. Head coach, Erez Edelshtein, was disappointed: “We waited for this game, not Italy but to be in the last 16, for many years. There is no team in Europe that can beat a full Israeli squad by double digits. Italy scored about their average but we were down 20 points from our average. We broke easily.”
For the Israeli team, Gal Mekel, who was the top scorer with 20 points, said: “We’re very disappointed. We’ve waited for this game for a long time. We didn’t show up like we wanted. But I’m still proud of the way we played this tournament.”