Eurobasket 07 - Greece vs Israel 03/09

03 September 2007
Champions Greece Past First Test

The EuroBasket champs from Greece successfully started their campaign to defend the title with a 76-66 win over Israel in the second game of Group A tonight in Granada.

Israel, coming into the game with some huge momentum from the additional qualifying round, put up a big fight against the title-holders.

Greece couldn't put their opponents away until the final quarter, when they caught fire




Yotam Halperin (Israel)
Israel's Yotam Halperin had 20 points in the loss.
from long range, connecting on five of seven three-point shots at one point.

They came to EuroBasket without the injured Antonis Fotsis and feared it might affect the team's performance, but tonight they had nothing to worry about.

The team's two other power forwards -- Kostas Tsartsaris and Demos Dikoudis - combined for 30 points on 66% shooting from the field, 11 rebounds and two blocks. The former stepped up in the last quarter with two crucial baskets from beyond the arc.

"I'm very disappointed on one side but very proud of us on the other," said Israel's forward Ido Kozikaro, who scored eight points and grabbed seven rebounds. "We gave a lot of effort, but we came too short."

Greece left a lot of sweat on court, but they knew it was going to be a tough game. "We knew from the start Israel are a team of fighters and this is what happened," said Tsartsaris after the game.

It took Israel almost three minutes to get its first points on the board, and by then Greece already led 7-0.

Jeron Roberts woke the challengers with five points in a row, and his seventh point was followed by Yotam Halperin's three-pointer to give Israel their first lead of the night.

Greece though answered with four points in a row to take a 19-15 lead after 10 minutes, but Halperin was just getting warmed up.

He added seven points, and together with a great job in the paint by Yaniv Green, helped Israel take a surprising 31-28 lead with a little under a minute left in the half. Tsartsaris though converted a three-point play to send the teams to the locker room tied at 31 a piece.

"Our point was to be very patient. This was the key for the win today," revealed the winning coach Panagiotis Yannakis after the game, and the second half set an example of that mentality.

Greece were two for 11 from long range at the break, but rediscovered their touch in the second half.

Halperin made it 42-40 to the Israeli side with 3:38 to play in the third, but for the next 11 minutes the Greek defense clamped down on their opponents.

On the offensive end, Yannakis' gang hit just about everything from downtown. When the score was tied at 46-46, Dimitrios Diamantidis hit a three-pointer which started a rain of three's by Greece.

"For 30 minutes it was a close game, but in the last quarter we created a gap and kept it until the end," said Tsartsaris, but was very gentle in his analysis.

His team hit five three-pointers - all by different players - out of six attempts in a span of 4:30 minutes, to take a seven-point lead. Tsartsaris followed Diamantidis and saw Diamanthidis Ntikoudis, Theodoros Papaloukas and Vasileios Spanoulis follow on from them.

After Spanoulis broke the "trend" with a two-point shot, Papaloukas hit another long bomb to make it a 66-59 game for Greece.

Israel didn't give up just yet as Halperin converted another three-point play to cut the deficit to four, only for Tsartsaris to hit from long range line once again with 2:28 to play. The shot took whatever spirit Israel had left and seal the game.

Greece will take on Serbia tomorrow in an attempt to clinch a place for the next round, while Israel will face Russia.

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[mirmir246]

this is just SPORT!!!!! go to hamas video if you hate israel...

P.S israel love greece... beautiful country...

[mousdewaga]

i hope this loss was not too anti-Semitic (^_^)

[Petros Zacharopoulos]

not even close, kid :p

[GarshardJeVard]

U mad, bro?

[Petros Zacharopoulos]

aaa, piss off you stupid fat american yankee. go munch on some kfc.

[Arxidomorfos]

ohhh! I guess you are not reading this comment either. It started also with ohhh. You didn't read the comment as a waste of time but you bothered writing a reply. weird sence of time.

[GarshardJeVard]

sorry bro, I didn't even read your last comment after I saw the ohhh!! That signifies ignorance and you aren't worth my time. 

[Arxidomorfos]

ohhh! You hit me in my weak point! My typing skills! How can I answer now?? I mentioned accuse 3 times you moron. I mistyped it only once by accident. And even if I didn't knew how to write it correctly, so what? English isn't my basic language. It's a foreign language to me. Can you speak another language besides english?The only shitty thing here is your brain! I guess they are right when they say stupidity is unbeatable! Ok you won. Athletes don't use drugs. And Santa exists!

[GarshardJeVard]

I guess I feel bad for the poor uneducated children in shitty countries such as yours.... can't even spell accuse and doesn't know that when you refer to a country's team and you are part of that country you say "we." None of the US's basketball team is on steroids and you aren't man enough to admit it.

[Arxidomorfos]

"Acuse us"?? I accuse the team. I don't accuse you. I don't give a shit about you! You are an idiot who wants to feel part of the team's success just because he lives in the same country with the players. And secondly, I don't care enough how much my team sucks (for the reasons i mentioned above). The fact that players (not only americans) take steroids doesn't change. If you want to believe that we live in a perfect world with no cheating, it'sok! Think about who's the dumbass!

[GarshardJeVard]

Your team must suck bad if you have to accuse us of steroids....DUMBASS.

[Arxidomorfos]

Wow! How I didn't though of that??? If only there were drugs that are not detected in blood... Wake up you puppet. Stop living in lies!!!