Türkiye vs Italia 92-98 (67100)A very narrow defeat against Italy. The game was very close until the last seconds, but in the end, they were a tiny bit better. Two main reasons for the loss are:
1.
Rebounding. Italy destroyed us in rebounding in today's game. When I saw the line-ups, I knew that they would have advantage in rebounding, both of their centers have high rebounding, but the main difference was that their SF is a world-class player with great rebounding as well. Still, to have 18 more offensive rebounds than us is perhaps a bit unrealistic. Our centers had better game shape than theirs, and our guards all have high rebounding. Their guard Caneva has RB 6, less than any of our guards, but he still had 2 offensive rebounds, while our starting guards combined had 0 offensive rebounds. A bit weird, but we have to accept it.
2.
Fouls. Some of our key players tend to foul a lot, and there's not much that can be done about it. For those players, zones can help a bit, since players usually make less fouls in a zone, but today that wasn't the case. We didn't foul a lot in the previous 2 games, but against Italy, everyone was fouling more than usual. They scored 27 points from a free throw line (20 in the first half), and we made 25 fouls, while they only made 13.
Overall, this was a game where we didn't have much to lose, since Italy were a favorite, but we could've gained a lot if we had won. Still, I'm disappointed that we lost, because I feel like if we played 4 games with the same tactics and line-ups, we would have won 3. The difference in offensive rebounds (7 vs 25), and fouls (25 vs 13) isn't realistic. Sure, they had slightly better rebounders in the game, but not by
that much, and our players tend to foul a bit more than theirs, but not by
that much.
Perhaps I'm wrong, maybe they would have beaten us every time if we played the same tactics, but to me it seemed like we were just unlucky today. Of course, there's definitely things that I could have done better tactically, and perhaps Motion or Princeton would have been a better option for today's match, than Run and Gun.
Group standings after the 3rd round:
1) Deutschland 3:0 +157
2) Italia 3:0 +98
3) England 2:1 +82
4) Türkiye 2:1 +30
5) Makedonija 1:2 -11
6) Schweiz 1:2 -57
7) Luxembourg 0:3 -118
8) Ísland 0:3 -181
Germany's point difference is great since they already played against the weakest teams in our group – Island & Luxembourg. Our next match is against them, and it's gonna be a key match for us. Losing will mean we will have very little chance to qualify for the second phase, while winning would put us in a pretty good position, since our last 3 matches are against the 3 weakest nations in our group.