GB Men Look To Seal The Group Tonight Against Macedonia

Drew Sullivan will look to captain GB to a 6th straight victory

The GB Standard Life men will look to seal qualification into Eurobasket 2011 tonight when they face their biggest test of the EuroBasket qualifiers so far taking on FYR Macedonia in Skopje.

The Macedonians have won all ten home games since gaining promotion from Division B in 2005, reaching the last two EuroBasket finals in the process, and head coach Chris Finch knows his team face a tough challenge:

“Macedonia is an excellent team and playing in front of their home crowd provides us with a great challenge. With each group game come twists and turns depending on results of other games – we are simply focused on Monday’s game.”

In their previous meeting in Newcastle a fortnight ago, GB snatched victory from the jaws of defeat after Luol Deng hit a three pointer with 6 seconds remaining to send the game to overtime where they overpowered the Macedonian side to win 104-96.

The efforts will focus on stopping Macedonia’s lighting quick point guard Bo McCalleb who dropped 30 on them in their first meeting and is leading the tournament in scoring at 25 ppg.

Finch is well aware of the threat that he posesses and feels his team are ready to go tonight:

“McCalleb has played well for them. He can really score so we will need to step up our defensive effort. The guys are ready to play again after having the last bye. The extra days of preparation always help but at this point we are ready to get to game time and compete.”

The GB men are currently undefeated at 5-0 and victory tonight will mean qualification from Group B with two games to spare.

I will be finding a live stream to the game later on and posting it on Hoopsfix, so keep checking back! The game will have a 7.45pm UK time tip.