By Semih Tuna / Stuna@eurohoops.net
Tbilisi, Georgia – Alperen Sengun scored 24 points, grabbed 8 rebounds and dished 6 assists in the win over Turkey over Belgium. And after the game, he admitted that after the notorious Korkmaz incident, the Turkish team flipped the switch.
“Unfortunate events took place in Georgia game but they helped us wake up. We started the game with great toughness, we have to play every game with this effort. We are in great shape.” said Alperen.
“We are ready for the next game against Spain. I think we will play great. It will be a game for the 1st place. We will play tough and win, then travel to Germany with joy.”
Alperen thinks improvement on defense was the key against Belgium and it’s just the start: “We don’t have much trouble in offense. We have a lot of talented players. We were having troubles in the defensive side of the game, today we managed well on that part too. Hope we can carry out this performance and show this effort in every game. As long as we play like we played today, we won’t lose any game. We will show this in Germany.”
NBA stars Luka Doncic and Evan Fournier had their own complains about the tight schedule in EuroBasket 2022. “Luka, Fournier… These are players from NBA. We are familiar with this type of schedules but in Europe, basketboll is played with much more toughness. NBA has this kind of schedule too, we are ready. We train a lot, have time for rest and get ready for games.” said Sengun.
Turkish National Team coach Ergin Ataman stated before the Belgium game that Alperen is affected by the criticism which took place after the defeat against Georgia. Alperen has his own answer on the issue:“Georgia game affected me and the whole team. I don’t take bad comments in consideration a lot, these things can happen. But when the criticism emerges, you unavoidably see them.”