Again we played two games since my last report. We tried our best to grab a win against Hungary, but fell somewhat short
(80497). Then we played a must-win game against Malta, which was successful
(80502). What remains is the "almost impossible to win" game against Spain, we'll see what we can do after the Friday GS update.
In my latest post, I apparently jinxed
Herman "HHH" Hansson, who got injured shortly after I praised him for his performances. So, unfortunately, we had to play against Hungary without him. On the other hand,
Kristian Forsbratt returned to full form, so we had a clear team leader nonetheless.
We started the game against Hungary very well, soon leading 14-6. However, we only lead by 1 point at the end of Q2. Hungarians first got in the front position at the beginning of the Q2, and stayed there until the half-time, when the result was 52-49 for them. For most of the Q3, the result moved very evenly, but by the end of the quarter, the Hungarians materialized their lead a bit more solidly. Their highest lead was +9, and the quarter was finished at +6 for them. Unfortunately we started the last 12 minutes very lazy, and the advantage of Hungarians quickly doubled and almost tripled, with the highest difference being +17. By the end of the game we managed to get a bit closer but were never in real contention for getting the game to the over-time. Unfortunately we lacked some more offensive power of our best outside players, so we are definitely in need for more depth, but this will hopefully change soon. I must emphasize 15 assists of
Michael Ahler, which got him to the shared 2nd place in the all-time list for most assists in a single game.
The game against Malta was the complete opposite of the game against Hungary. This time we were the favourites, however the Maltese started the game much better, and got to a +16 lead sooner than we realized the game started. The first quarter finished at 42-30 for Malta, which was a bit alarming for us. Luckily we were able to turn the game around somewhat quickly by starting the Q2 with 14-2, equalizing to 44. We took the lead at 49-48, and then increased our advantage to 71-65 by half-time. In the second half we quickly got to +20, which effectively sealed the game, although Maltese managed to get back to 12 points difference. We had some problems with their best player,
Luke Ghigo, who scored 49 points and was the reason why
Kristian Forsbratt fouled out. But the one-man band from Malta got more and more tired as the game progressed, so the last quarter was again ours, and our advantage steadily increased to the final 147-125 for Sweden. As expected, Forsbratt and Hansson were our best scorers (33 and 23 pts), while young
Mats Josefsson also had a remarkable debut on competitive games. He scored 22 points from the bench, and was a very solid replacement for Forsbratt when he fouled out.
The standings of the group are:
1. Spain, 5-1, +166
2. Czech rep, 5-1, +103
3. Hungary, 4-2, +57
4. Sweden, 4-2, +16
5. Portugal, 3-3, -21
6. Denmark, 2-4, -17
7. Andorra, 1-5, -62
8. Malta, 0-6, -242
Last games are: Denmark-Czech rep., Portugal-Andorra, Hungary-Malta,
Sweden-Spain
We have very, very slim options of getting in front of either Spain, Czech rep or Hungary. It is much more likely, that Portugal will get in front of us, so the primary goal for our last game is to finish 4th in the group. Which basically means we have to maximize our performance against Spain. This obviously applies to more or less any game, so not a big game changer. It is no secret, that it will be a CT-TIE game, but the Spaniards are still huge favorites. Portugal and Andorra will likely play CT-CT, so I don't think Andorra can help us here, but let's see.
I would love to see what we can do against the arguably best team in Europe with all our best players in the top game shape!