With Giannis to get “fire” then and make a break under the two baskets achieving six collected points, the “blue and white” raised the difference to +12 for 18-6 at 6′. One a lucky three-pointer by Schroeder then gave the Germans an offensive breath, so that Kalathes came to the “caps” to answer with the same coin for 21-9 in the 9th minute. In fact, this was the only three-pointer attempted by our country in the quarter! The score of the first period was created by Mo Wagner shortly before the final, with our national team ending the quarter at +10 and 21-11.
The world champion started in the second quarter with a quick 7-2 run by Mo Wagner and Weiler-Bubb cutting the gap to 5 (16-21) at 11′. Mitoglou, Walkap and Toliopoulos aggressively “unstuck” our National Team, with the latter even scoring a huge three-pointer from a distance and using the scoreboard for 28-20 at 13′! Shortly after in fact, our captain, Kostas Papanikolaou, with a shot behind 6.75m. maintained the gap at these levels (24-31) at 15′.
Somewhere in there though, Gordon Herbert's team strong>raised her performance and with successive three-pointers by Bonga and Voigdman, she reduced it to three (30-33), taking advantage of the few minutes of inactivityand the decline of our national team in the offensive part. Somehow, the “punchers” gradually gnawed away at the difference in the last part of the period, with Daniel Tice's excellent alley oop nailing in fact 9 seconds before the final making it 36-36 at halftime. p>
The match turned into a three-point contest at the beginning of the third period, where Schroeder shot from behind 6.75m. in Germany's first attack, he put his country in front for the first time in the score (39-36). Giannis and Feigdman “exchanged” two points, to be followed by Walkup (2) and Papanikolaou and with three straight 3-pointers, putting the “official favorite” back in front of thescore with 47-42 at 24′!
More in a moment…
The quarters: 11-21, 36- 36, 59-52, 76-63.
