Eurobasket day 1 – French shock

By Aris Barkas/ barkas@eurohoops.net

What a day! Eurobasket started unpredictably and it can end the same way. Germany surprised France, Turkey lost for the first time since 1955 to Finland and also we had some other minor surprises like Great Britain prevailing in overtime over Israel, Georgia destroying Poland and two games decided by a point with Montenegro and Ukraine winning thanks to their naturalized upgrades. So here’s what happened.

MVP

Rolands Freimanis

Latvia beat Bosnia 86-75 in the first game of Group B and Freimanis had a career night with 24 points on 11/13 shots before being ejected with five fouls in 17 minutes of action. It seems unreal and it is, given the fact that he scored his first 20 points in the first half of the game and Bosnia couldn’t recover from that.

Best Five

1. Heiko Schaffartzik: He had a double double (12 p., 11 as.) in the biggest upset of the night, the win of Germany over France in Group A against the biggest star of the tournament, Spurs’ Tony Parker.
2. Kyle Johnson: He led the charge of GB in the overtime win against Israel (75-71). He surprised everyone and scored 22 points, giving to his team – considered by many the weakest of the tournament on paper – its first win in Group A.
3. Rolands Freimanis: It was his night.
4. Luigi Datome: What a night for him! The win of Italy against problematic Russia in Group D wasn’t a surprise, but he was sensational with 25 points on 9/13 shots and 8 rebounds.
5. Nenad Krstic: Against Jonas Valanciunas, the center of CSKA Moscow dominated the paint by scoring 20 points and getting 9 rebounds in the win of Serbia over Lithuania. Despite their absences, the Serbs are here to fight in Group B.

“JR Holden” award

The new mantra, specially for countries with limited talent pool is “get a naturalized American as a point guard”. After all JR Holden as a naturalized Russian gave to his team the gold medal against host Spain with his last shot back in 2007. Two of them won the games for the teams in similar fashion, Pooh Jeter with a goal foul for Ukraine over Belgium (Group A) and Tyrese Rice – vs Bo McCalebb – in the barnburner between Montenegro and FYROM (Group B).

Favorites watch

Greece and Spain got two easy wins against Sweden in Group D and Croatia in Group C respectively. However for the Greeks it was just a good start against one weak team and for the Spaniards an easy game against a roster with individual talent that doesn’t work as a unit.

The surprise

Everyone knew that Germany was a solid team, but nobody expected a win against France. It was a rude wake up call for Tony Parker and his teammates, since the game was decided in the last minutes and Germans made all the right plays in crunch time.

The disappointments

You have to put Turkey here, but also Poland which lost to Georgia by 27 points (84-67) in Group C. Having the front line duo of Marcin Gortat and Maciej Lampe didn’t help them avoid an embarrassing defeat.

Eurobasket 2013-2014 – 1^st Day