GB Suffer Heavy Loss at Hands of Finland

By Sam Neter on August 15, 2013

Great Britain suffered an 88-66 loss at the hands of Finland on Thursday, in their second official warm-up game of the summer.

Despite trailing by just one at halftime, a 16-0 third quarter period by the Finns sealed GB’s fate, as poor shooting plagued them once again.

Eric Boateng had a team-high 13 points, along with 9 rebounds, whilst Devon van Oostrum and Kyle Johnson added 12 each, with Drew Sullivan joining them in double digits with 10.

“We’ll take a lot from this game,” he said. “The third quarter was tough for us, offensively and defensively. We’d done a decent job in the first half in terms of limiting their three-point shots.

“We stabilised things in the second quarter but after we led at the start of the third, it kind of snowballed. So we’re going to have to handle runs like that much better.”

“We were really good for 25 minutes,” said Sullivan, the GB team’s most capped player.

“Defensively, we did everything we needed to do in the first half by holding them to 36 points. We were only down by one but unfortunately in the second half, we let them get too much room.

“When you’re playing against a team with so many good shooters, if you give them a little bit of space, they’ll hit shots.”

There were first caps for London-based forward Orlan Jackman and Grimbsy-born centre Liam Potter. Koponen had a game-high 14 points for Finland.

GB also lost 91-84 over 5 quarters to Finland on Wednesday night in a closed door scrimmage. They will now face Greece on Sunday in Crete at 13:00 BST.

Box score.

Image Credit: GB Basketball

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