By Johnny Askounis/ info@eurohoops.net
Questionable calls down the stretch led to the eruption of France’s senior national team head coach Vincent Collet in the postgame press conference following the 2022 EuroBasket Group B Gameday 5 contest opposite Slovenia.
“Basketball is a fantastic game. It is fantastic when the players can decide. When the game was tied, it was not a normal foul on [Elie] Okobo in the midcourt. It was probably an unsportsmanlike foul. And [Goran] Dragic was able to go the basket after this foul,” the French tactician shared his view on the game-winning bucket scored by the new player of the Chicago Bulls, “What can I say? Talk about the game. When you see such things like that. It’s impossible. It’s impossible that we have the best players, the level of the game is high, and we see that. It has to be fair until the end. I never complain. For so many years, I never complained. But tonight, what can I say to my players? The last two fouls on Okobo and [Evan] Fournier. We can’t even play our chances. They go back to the locker room with the whistles in their pockets with no fear! What can we do? That’s all.”
“Ι am 13 years in international competitions and I have never seen,” he furthered in the French-based portion of the press conference, “We got 26 assists and they got 11. We got 24 fouls, while our opponents 14. And in the 32 first minutes of the game, the difference was 22 to eight. I don’t even want to talk about that. I talk only about the last two fouls. The foul on Okobo was not normal. We didn’t feel any respect. Slovenia has Luka Doncic, OK… But the French national team also has achieved some things in the past few years. We are not demanding different treatment. We just want the calls to be correct.”
“Yes, it’s part of the game, but up to a point. In this game, the treatment towards us was bad,” he added.
French Federation of Basketball Jean-Pierre Siutat supported Collet. “Everyone would agree with Vincent Collet. Solidarity with our Blues desiring fair refereeing,” he wrote in a post shared on Twitter.
Losing the game, France settled for the third seed of the group, instead of potentially landing the first.
Photo Credit: FIBA.BASKETBALL