Galery

1

The basketball match between the teams of Greece and Puerto Rico from the World Championship in Ankara finished 83-80. This is the second victory of the Greek nationals. On 28.08 they won the China team with 89-81. Due to the result from tonight they kept their first place in the third group of the tournament.  

The end is really happy, but the fight to get to it was serious. Puerto Rico proved to be a hard nut to crack and tortured the Greek team to the end. The success went hand in hand sometimes with one of the teams and sometimes with the other till the last minute. This definitely made both teams nervous and the game turned into a derby match.
 
The beginning of the game was not promising for the Greek team. The coach Jonas Kazlauskas decided to involve Ian Vougioukas in the major fives. Vougioukas scored once at the beginning of the match and this was almost all of his contribution to the team. The back was in weak position and Ramos managed to take advantage of this. He made wonders which in combination with the triple points flood scored by his teammates gave Puerto Rico 11-6 lead. The Greek nationals immediately stroke back the gained advantage. Spanoulis made the result 12-11 already in the fifth minute. However, the counterattack did not last long. The Greeks lagged behind again later. So, the first quarter ended 21-23.

The second quarter brought changes to the court. Greece certainly had some problems to attack. The team had a dozen of chances to score but it failed. Puerto Rico took advantage of this weakness and decided to had it out with the opponent’s defence. The main character of the campaign was Barea. The player unleashed the floor, made his way to the basket and caused a lot of damages to the opponents.

The Greeks played somewhat better during the third quarter. The team succeeded to score and took the lead with 52-51 in the 26^th minute. Thanks to the triple points of Bourousis Greece took the lead with 59-56 in the 30^th minute. This was the time when the team started to impose its rhythm. However, a series of 5-0 for Puerto Rico followed that shook the balance on the playground again. As if victory joked and showed itself to the one side of the court at times and at times to the other side. Technical penalty, minutes before the end of the match, proved to be the turning point for Greece.   
 
 
Minutes: 23-21, 35-41, 59-56, 83-80   

Greece (Kazlauskas): Tsartsaris, Vougioukas, Diamantidis, Spanoulis, Zisis, Printezis, Kalathis, Bourousis, Perperoglou,

Puerto Rico (Citron): Vassalo, Lee, Ramos, Barea, Sanchez, Santiago, Balkman, Diaz, Huertas, Rivera, Peavy