By Aris Barkas/ barkas@eurohoops.net
Greece erased a 16-point deficit against Spain to come back down the stretch but couldn’t get the win in the last minutes. Thomas Walkup believes that his team shouldn’t have put themselves in this kind of trouble in the first place.
“We dug ourselves a hole early on. It is not about finishing in crunch time,” Walkup said. “We are not down 16 in both of these games. And we go into halftime as a tie game. We are sitting in a great position there in the third quarter. But that is not basketball. That is not how it works. It is 40 minutes,” he explained, “I would not say it is about crunch time stuff. It is more so about little lapses that we had throughout both games and allowed teams to get the lead.”
Greece tied the score at 71 with four minutes but then Spain made an 8-0 run to get a winning advantage.
“We got a little bit stagnant on offense. We did not get great shots,” Walkup described the final minutes, “For most of the second half, we were playing in great rhythm. Shooting open shots, driving the ball, and then we reverted a little bit back to what we did there in the second quarter when we were.”
Asked to rate his personal performances, Walkup answered that he’s not satisfied but, in the end, this is about team results. “It does not matter if I am happy, or sad,” he responded about individual showings in the Olympic Games so far. He’s averaging 5.0 points (3-13 shots overall) and 4.0 assists. “I think I can do better, I think I can do worse. It does not matter. We have two losses and that is all that matters.”
“Every player can look at himself at the end of the day and say I could have done this better, I could have done that better,” Walkup added. “It is a game of a million mistakes throughout 40 minutes,” he added, “Today our mistakes got punished. I do not think anybody is going home and rating their own performance. Everybody is looking at the win and loss column and it is our job to come back on Friday and get the win and that is all that matters.”
Greece needs Canada to defeat Australia later on Tuesday and a win over Australia on Friday to remain in the hunt for a berth in the Quarterfinals.
“We know that we can win this last game against Australia,” Walkup said. “When you looked at parts of our performance today and parts of our performance against Canada you can say that we can beat anybody in this tournament and it is about executing it for 40 minutes. he initially focused on remaining clinching scenarios, So we know that we can do it. It is about going out there and doing it.”
Toliopoulos: “A pity for the effort”
Outside of Giannis Antetokounmpo, Vassilis Toliopoulos was one of the few reliable offensive options for Greece. The Aris Thessaloniki guard had 14 points on 4-6 triples, including some big-time shots in the fourth quarter.
“The second quarter was really bad,” Toliopoulos said. “It’s a pity for the effort we put on the floor during the second half.
“You can’t allow 10-0 runs in this kind of high-level games,” Toliopoulos added. “We should learn from this.”