By Eurohoops Team/ info@eurohoops.net
Italy closed its Group C games with a convincing 90-56 win against Great Britain, in front of a passionate crowd in Mediolanum Forum, finishing in 4th position with a 3-2 record.
With this victory and after Serbia’s win against Poland, Pozzecco’s team will face Nikola Jokic and his teammates in the Round of 16 of EuroBasket 2022.
Despite knowing his team would end up in the final spot of the group after the end of Croatia-Ukraine, Gianmarco Pozzecco decided to give a good amount of minutes to his stars Simone Fontecchio (18 p., 4 r., 4 a.) and Nicolò Melli (11 p.), who responded great as they’ve always done in these games.
Tommaso Baldasso (6 p., 3 r., and 2 a.), Giampaolo Ricci (10 p., 8 r., and 4 a.), and Gigi Datome (13 p., 4 r., 4 a.), in front of his friend tennis player Matteo Berrettini, also delivered.
“We wanted to finish in the right way. We take the positive things of these matches and we will be ready for the game on Sunday”, Giampaolo Ricci commented. “I’m really happy. It wasn’t the most difficult game for us, but Great Britain played well against anybody in the first two quarters. My players started to play with confidence and we beat them. We are where we want to be”, coach Gianmarco Pozzecco said.
Great Britain ended its EuroBasket 2022 with a 0-5 record. Myles Hesson (18 p., 6 r.) had an important performance, which helped his team on a very difficult day: at the beginning of the game, a moment of silence was kept in the memory of Queen Elizabeth.
“It’s another difficult night for us. They’ve caused us a lot of problems. We fought as hard as we could for the whole of EuroBasket, but it hasn’t been our week”, Dan Clark said. “Italy is a very good team. It’s tough when you score two points in the fourth period. I thought we had good looks that just didn’t go down”, coach Nathan Reinking added.
Photo Credit: FIBA.BASKETBALL