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The 24^th international basketball tournament Acropolis is held from 17^th to 19^th of August in the Olympic Centre in Athens. From 1986 onwards the tournament has become one of the biggest basketball events preceding important meetings of the Greek nationals. Big stars, famous European and world basktebol players participated in the Acropolis. This year, Greece has three strong friendly matches on the road to the World Cup in Turkey. These are the meetings with the teams of Canada, Slovenia and the vice champion of Europe, Serbia. The end of the general trial for the World Championship in Turkey will be on August 25 when the hosts will play with the United States. The country will participate in the World Championship in Turkey in the third group together with the teams of China, Russia, Puerto Rico, Côte Divuar and Turkey. It will meet the Chinese team on 28.08, Puerto Rico on 29.08, Turkey on 31.08, Côte Divuar on 01.09 and Russia on 02.09. The aim of Greece is to take one of the top four positions in the group, but also to keep the silver medal it has won at the World Championship in Japan in 2006.

After they have smashed the team of Canada with 123:49 the Greek nationals fought the team of Slovenia. They won the friendly match, played on the OAKA field in Athens, with 96-72.

The Slovenians played vigorously at the start of the meeting. They clearly showed a willing to fight, at least initially. The team quickly won the lead due to the resulting attack and the score in the seventh minute was 15-12. This cold shower sobered  the Greek nationals. They woke up and proceeded with lightning counterattacks. They did not late to find the rhythm of the game. They made this apparently easy. Permanent hits of Schortsianitis, Perperoglou and Printezis made the loss even and brought the lead. The Greek nationals proved to be kings of the orchestra ... for the second consecutive night. Slovenia did find themselves in the embarrassing position of lagging behind as the hosts could boast of great  ball playing and strong defense in addition to a quick game. Greece's lead grew increasingly giving rise to the delight of the team coach Jonas Kazlauskas. So, the meeting with Slovenia began to resemble more a simple training ... Nikos Kalathis showed very good game tonight and he had very precise hits.  

At the end hosts stressed on simple game and defense. Their goal was simply to maintain the difference in the result. This, however, made them ease off shortly before the last 10 minutes of the game. The guests took advantage of this fact and managed to score 20 points in less than 10 minutes. Then Kostas Tsartsaris proceeded to new attacks and there was difference in the result again...  

Greece (Kazlauskas): Papanikolaou, Kaimakoglou, Zisis, Spanoulis, Kalathis, Fotsis, Printezis, Perperoglou, Tsartsaris, Diamantidis, Vougioukas, Schortsanitis

Slovenia (Bečirović): Slokar, Lakovič, Udrih, Rizvić, Klobučar, Z. Dragić, G. Dragić, Jagodnik, Zupan, Vidmar, Murić.