GB Fall to Nigeria in Opener

By Sam Neter on June 22, 2012

Great Britain lost their opening warm-up of the summer on Thursday evening, falling 86-80 in overtime to Nigeria at Houston Baptist University, Houston.

Nigeria hit a three with 3 seconds left in regulation to tie the game, before overcoming GB in the extra period.

Andrew Lawrence led GB with 19 points, Eric Boateng had 13 points, while Matthew Bryan-Amaning and Joel Freeland added 10 each in a game coach Chris Finch used to help make his decisions on the final squad. Ike Diogu had 33 for Nigeria.

After the game, Finch said he was unfazed by the loss:

“We will just go on from here really. Some games are good, some are bad, and there is still lots to work on. This was an evaluation of our guys to see who will and won’t make the squad.

“We played the way we want to play and we should have won that game, we just needed to be smarter down the stretch and we got hurt on the rebounds. We have got to do better on that but these are first steps and the key is to get better from here.”

GB will look to bounce back on Saturday night when they play Lithuania.

Notes

GB starters – Ogo Adegboye, Nate Reinking, Drew Sullivan, Dan Clark, Joel Freeland.
Attendance was said to be approximately 115.
Luol Deng, Pops Mensah-Bonsu and Devon van Oostrum all sat out, whilst Ben Gordon is still not in attendance.
For regular updates from Houston, follow @chrismbbcsport, @gallagherben and @iwhittell on Twitter who are all out there following the team.

Image Credit: GB Basketball/David Fudge

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