England U16s Roll Past Netherlands

England Under-16s continued their unbeaten run as they beat Netherlands 79-58 to move to 5-0 at the Division B European Championships and almost guarantee themselves a place in the semi finals.

Mo Soluade had a triple double with 11 points, 10 rebounds, and 11 assists whilst adding 4 steals, Tyrell Isaacs led all scorers with 18 points, Sam Round had 14, Kingsley Okoroh 12 points, 9 rebounds, 2 steals and 2 blocks and Luke Nelson had 12 points and 7 assists.

Head coach Simon Fisher called the performance one of the best he has seen in his coaching career:

“I have coached many international games, and this performance ranks amongst the best of them, the true nature of team basketball was evident with five players in double figures and another on eight, Twenty-one assists show the unselfish nature of the players under immense pressure. We have highlighted within the group games, the turnover ratio to steals – today we had 10 of each, but with the assists added it was too much for the Dutch to handle.

“The game plan worked a treat as the players understood the concepts we are trying to employ, and we kept their weapons quite, with their most influential player Bas Veenstra held to six points in 33 minutes (he is averaging close to 17), this work was a mixture of zone and man, but the unheralded hero was Tamas Okros, who although had no points, his efforts summed up the team ethic as he was the player that was assigned this task. Today the focus was on consistency and being clinical once we had control, we did this through strategy (mixing defences), controlling the tempo and ensuring we kept the players minds on the performance. I have to pay immense credit to the whole staff team, for anyone has played a part in getting us this result.

“The team realise however this is only the next step towards the overall goal, we are know in the main game we wanted to be in, but we have to improve to get the best result possible, and you can be assured we will all to working towards that over the next few days.”

Full box scores, play by play and statistics are available here.

England will now take on Slovenia tomorrow afternoon, a top two finish in their group will see them advance to the semis-an outcome that is guaranteed if Slovenia beat Romania this afternoon.

Notes

• England Starters: Luke Nelson, Sam Round, Mo Soluade, Tamas Okros, Kingsley Okoroh
• A run of 10 consecutive missed field goals bridging the second and third quarters allowed Netherlands to reduce the deficit to 7 just three minutes into the third period, but a Simon Fisher timeout resulted in a 7-0 run led by Tyrell Isaacs, giving England a comfortable lead which they ran out the rest of the game.
• England did not attempt 1 free throw all game. Just 5 fouls were called on the Dutch all game. Never seen numbers like that before.

Image Credit: Eurohopes