Great Britain Come Up Short vs Latvia

By Sam Neter on July 19, 2014

Great Britain Senior Men fell 77-73 in their opening preparation game of the summer at the University of Worcester Arena on Saturday afternoon in Worcester.

It was Latvia who made the plays when it counted, hitting a big three and their free throws down the stretch to hold off a late GB charge. A questionable no call on Dan Clark inside with 13 seconds remaining, coupled with his missed three pointer in the dying seconds sealed GB’s fate.

“Obviously we’d like to win,” said Prunty. “I think we did a lot of positive things, we moved the ball well, we had like 19 assists, our turnovers were around 14 so there were a lot of things that we did well but I would say we can still improve upon. I’d like to see us take better shots, we had some shot selections that weren’t up to par but I think part of that is getting comfortable with one another having only been together 3 and a half days.

“Defensively we had a few mistakes that we just can’t have. Mental mistakes that cost us easy baskets.”

After playing them to a standstill in the first half, Latvia began to find their range in the second half, finishing 8/17 from beyond the arc.

“I thought we competed well, obviously Latvia, they’ve been together a while with a lot of the same players as last year,” said Clark, who led the team with 15 points, 6 rebounds and 4 assists.

“It was a good experience for us, we’ve got a lot to learn still and we’ve got time to learn which is good. We’ve got to take the positives instead of the negatives out of the game and learn from it and move on from there.”

Myles Hesson added 15 of his own, Ashley Hamilton added 11 points and 9 rebounds, Kieron Achara 7 points, 6 rebounds, 3 assists and 4 blocks, while Devon van Oostrum added 6 assists along with his 7 points.

GB will look to bounce back when they play Latvia again in the second game of their double header at 3pm at Worcester University Arena.

Box score.

Do you like our work?

We have a tiny favour to ask. In 2018 we set out to make Hoopsfix sustainable by building our relationship directly with our readers. Up until now, Hoopsfix has been creating editorials, videos and podcasts to provide sorely missing coverage of the British game and its distinct culture and community.

We have funded Hoopsfix with our freelance work creating basketball media, but sadly that means not only does it fall behind our client’s priorities, but some of those clients are the same organisations we need to report objectively on putting us in a conflicted position.

We want to devote more time to our mission of helping British basketball reach its potential, and produce even more content for the basketball community by making Hoopsfix a sustainable 100% independent business funded directly by our readers through Patreon.

If everyone who enjoys our content chose to support us, our future would be much more secure. For as little as $3 per month, you can support Hoopsfix – and it only takes a minute.

We are tremendously honoured and humbled to have a community of people who value what we do, and we look forward to being at the forefront of the British game as it continues to evolve.

Support Hoopsfix