(68419)England u21s 92 Georgia u21s 76What a game this one was, with both coaches making inspired defensive choices, arrows matching our 3-2 against Georgia's patient offence, and Georgia choosing the 2-3 against our look inside.
The first quarter was exceedingly tight, England twice having a 4 pt lead but in general there was more often just 2 points in the game. Our points were fairly evenly spread but after one quarter Lekishvili had 15 of Georgia's 19 pts.
The second went much the same way until with 6:42 left in the half we increased the lead to 6 for the first time with a Clarke jumper. We then did not score for the next 3:07 as Georgia scored 10 to give them a 4 point lead. By half time their lead had increased to five, causing a fair bit of concern amongst the England fans, though at least two did confidently state we would go on to win. By the way one of them wasn't me, and neither was the other one.
Slowly in the third we tried to chip away at the their lead, never allowing them to increase it, and keeping them under pressure. Bunce eventually gave us the lead for the final time with 5:18 left in the third, a jumper to give us a 54-52 lead.
We increased this to 8 by the end of the third and finally had 12 comfortable minutes as we ran out 16 point champions.
Clarke was our top scorer with 23, Bunce had 22 (including 10 FTs) and 5 assists, and MacLachlan played well defensively contributing 6 blocks.
Accusations of stat padding were heard from somewhere as Boddie got a double double after a strong fourth quarter. Asked for a comment later he said "Big Boddies have a lot of gravity, so rebounds just come to me."