By Eurohoops team/ info@eurohoops.net
Even without being particularly impressive, the Italian national team began the Olympic Qualifying Tournament with a win, after dominating Tunisia 68 – 41. The game was practically decided in the third quarter, where a 22 – 2 partial score in favor of Italy expanded their margin to 25 points, 54 – 29.
That was obviously too much for the Tunisians and the final quarter simply had a procedural character for both teams, since Ettore Messina also decided to use many of his bench players a lot.
Andrea Bargnani finished the match as the top performer from the winning side with 15 points, 6 rebounds and 2 assists. Pietro Aradori (13 points, 4 rebounds) and Marco Belinelli (11 points) also delivered the goods for Italy.
The only player who scored in double-digits for Tunisia was Mourad El Mabrouk who had 14 points.