Βy Eurohoops team/ info@eurohoops.net
Juancho Hernangomez proved that “Bo Cruz”, his role in the movie “Hustle”, is a real person, by scoring 27 points on 9/11 FG and leading Spain to the Eurobasket 2022 gold medal over France. The final score was 88-76 as Spain dictated the pace for the most part of the game and had always an answer to every move France made.
In total, Juancho made seven threes, the second-best performance in a Eurobasket final after the nine threes of Aleksander Djordjevic for Serbia in the final of Eurobasket 1995.
His brother Willy Hernangomez added 14 points and eight rebounds as Spain got its fourth Eurobasket gold, for a total of 14 Eurobasket medals including six silvers and four bronzes, plus two FIBA World Cup golds and four medals in the Olympics.
And as he said in the press conference: “I am very happy because today it was Juancho and not Bo Cruz who did all this”.
Naturalized point guard Lorenzo Brown also did his part with 14 points and 11 assists, Jaime Fernandez scored 13 while in total Spain had 15/31 threes. Alberto Diaz with eight points and two big threes in the fourth quarter also did his part.
Evan Fournier with 23 points was the top scorer of France, which never got the lead in the game after the initial 1-0 score thanks to a free throw by Rudy Gobert.
“Spain played better from start to finish, they had a clear gameplan and we didn’t execute ours well enough, we never really had control of the game”, said Fournier after the game with Spain having just nine turnovers and France 19 at the end of the game.
Thomas Heurtel had 16 points and seven assists, while Guerschon Yabusele added 13 for the losing side.
Spain started the night with a 14-5 run and dominated most of the first half.
The “Rojas” were up by 19 twice in the second quarter (35-16, 41-22) with Juancho scoring 18 points in just nine minutes of action and 6/7 threes and also by 21 points (47-26) after a layup by his brother Willy who had 10 points up to this point.
The French answer was a steal and a layup by Terry Tarpey plus a three and a dunk by Evan Fournier, which made it a 10-point game (47-37) after an 11-0 run as the two teams went to the locker rooms.
The comeback was complete at the start of the third period, with France having a partial score of 20-2 and trimming the lead to three (49-46). However, Spain reacted swiftly with a 10-0 run (61-48) as Jaime Fernandez scored eight of those points to push the distance back to double digits.
France didn’t give up and made it again a three-point game (63-57) after a three by Elie Okobo. But one more three by captain Rudy Fernandez made the score 66-57 at the end of the third and Spain kept its solid lead until the final buzzer.
“We knew most of the things Spain was going to do, but we couldn’t respond”, admitted disappointed French coach Vincent Collet. “We didn’t give us the weapons to change the game”.
Photo: FIBA.BASKETBALL