THE Greece eliminated New Zealand with an upset and continues in the next phase of Mundobasket, with Dimitris Itoudis to congratulate his players at the press conference and mention, among other things, the performance of the National Team, the upcoming matches with Lithuania & Montenegro, and the performance of Larentzakis.
He did not fail to say “well done” to you “everyone who held the team together and that goes for everyone who is close to her. If you’re not ready to compete, you don’t belong here. If you don’t play hard, you don’t belong here.”
Analytically:
“Congratulations to our players and team. At halftime we said that we have to find a different way to stop the vertical creation of the opponents. In the first half we were playing wrong and it showed in New Zealand’s productivity. When we realized that, we went to different shapes and styles. The important thing is that the team continued to believe and stayed together. We went through difficulties, but it is not easy to come back from -15 and believe that we will find a way to support each other.
The players kept thinking, we’re here to help them, but they did. We stopped their creation and controlled the rebounds better, while we used the USA match to manage the players’ time. We came in a bit fresher, we had a bad approach in the first half, but we changed that. It’s not easy to do. Credit goes to the players, what they did was not easy. Congratulations to New Zealand too, they put up a great fight.
We are happy that we passed, it is a success that we are in the “16”. Now we have a day to see what we can do and we will try to do our best. Well done to everyone who kept the team together and that goes to everyone close to the team. If you’re not ready to compete, you don’t belong here. If you don’t play hard, you don’t belong here.
It’s important to challenge yourself, to get out of your comfort zone. This is what we will try to do. Lithuania and Montenegro are good teams, with strengths and weaknesses, just like us. We are excited to face them. The team can play well as a team. We share the ball well, even in our friendly defeats we had a lot of assists, even when we weren’t on target. That’s our identity offensively. Defense always gives us a boost for offense as well.
It doesn’t surprise me that Lithuania is playing well, they are guys who most of them have been playing together for years, several players are together in Zalgiris and they are improving. Of course they have absences, but they have found a good rhythm. We will try to find their weaknesses and I believe we will find them.
I told my partners that Walkup might need to play 40 minutes. It’s key for me that he turns and looks at me about how we’re going to play. He is always focused and reads how we should fight.
We were talking at half-time and Larry had 1/7 for 11 minutes. He shot badly, but that’s how Larry is. In critical moments he will play good defense or put a big shot on you. He plays with confidence and sees the game better now. He is growing as a player and sometimes he will have to wait for the game to come to him, without pushing it. He was fantastic in the second half.”
Source: Sport Fm
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