GB Beat Poland, Finish Eurobasket on a High

Great Britain finished their 2011 Eurobasket campaign on a high, beating Poland 88-81 behind a dominant performance from the tandem of Luol Deng and Joel Freeland.

GB will not advance to the second round at Eurobasket, but finished with a record of 2-3 to take fourth place in Group A. Deng finished with 28 points, 14 rebounds and 6 assists, whilst Freeland didn’t miss a shot as he had 27 points and 11 rebounds.

Head coach Chris Finch was pleased with the end result. Talking to DishnSwish he said:

“It was exactly the way we wanted to finish this tournament, with a big win against a really good side. I thought we really earned that today, at the end of a really tough week. I think we played well 80% of this week and we deserve where we are right now.

“I think we accomplished what we set out to do, we took a step forward from 2009, and now we’ve gotta take another step forward again.”

Luol Deng was glad the team finished on a high:

“We’ve got a young team and we just wanted to finish on a positive note. We played 3 of the best teams, we believe we had the toughest schedule, and we were down, but we worked so hard in practice we just wanted to finish on a positive note.”

GB dominated the glass, whilst shooting a healthy 51.5% from the field.

The London 2012 Olympics is up next, and with the team yet to field a full strength team, the future looks bright.

Full box score, play by play and statistics available here.

Check out these post-game interviews from DishnSwish.tv.

Other Results in Group A

Spain 57 – 65 Turkey
Spain missed their last 14 field goal attempts as they fell to their first loss of the tournament to Turkey. The result made little difference to them however, as they still advance to the next round at the top of Group A. Turkey were led by 18 points from Emir Preldzic, whilst Marc Gasol had 12 for Spain. Box score, play by play and statistics available here.

Portugal 69 – 98 Lithuania
Lithuania turned it on in the second half and cruised to a 29 point rout of Portugal. Sarunas Jasikevicius and Martynas Pocius led a team effort from Lithuania with 14 each. Carlos Andrade led Portugal with 16 points. Box score, play by play and statistics available here.

Final Standings in Group A

1. Spain 4/1
2. Lithuania 4/1
3. Turkey 3/2
4. Great Britain 2/3
5. Poland 2/3
6. Portugal 0/5

Notes

• GB starters: Ogo Adegboye, Nate Reinking, Luol Deng, Dan Clark, Joel Freeland
• Freeland’s best game of the tournament by FAR. Absolutely awesome to watch.
• GB DOMINATED the boards like I’ve never seen before. Winning the battle 46 to Poland’s 25, including 16 offensive rebounds.
• Andrew Lawrence, Devon Van Oostrum, Eric Boateng and perhaps most surprisingly, Drew Sullivan, all registered DNPs.
• Follow the rest of the tournament at the official Eurobasket website.

Image Credit: Mansoor Ahmed/Mansoor Ahmed Photography