The National Youth Team lost to Belgium and was left out of the eight

Even though he was at +13 in the third quarter, the National Youth blacked out in the final period and lost 66-62 to Belgium for his “16”. Eurobasket U18 which takes place in Tampere. So he was out of the top eight will fight to avoid relegation (the bottom three ranked teams are relegated to Division B) playing on Thursday (18:00) with Finland for positions 9-16. Lefteris Liotopoulos with 14 points, Andreas Patrikis with 13 points and 12 rebounds and Panagiotis Pagonis with 10 points and 9 rebounds fought more.

The match

The Greek team made a good start in the match with Liotopoulos leading the way (8-4, 12-7), while thanks to its excellent defense and the action of Avdala, it ended the quarter with a basket by Patrikis for 22-11. The Belgians reacted and with eight unanswered points in the first four minutes of the second period came closer to the shot (22-19). Spartalis offered solutions to the National team (28-21) which closed the half at +7, 35-28 having limited the opponents to 11/34 shots.

The team of Iosif Nicolaidis started the second half very well as well, reaching a double-digit difference (45-34, 49-36) with Pagonis as the protagonist. Belgium with Hodge gnawed the difference to six (52-46), but Avdala’s terrific nailer closed the third quarter by making it 54-46. The Greek team suffered a blackout at the start of the fourth period allowing the opponents to overtake by four (55-59). With points from Patrikis and Vlassis, it equalized (59-59), but Vanderstraeten’s three-pointer at 33” brought Belgium to 64-60 and close to victory. Rozakea’s shot at 3.8” narrowed the gap, but

Ten minutes: 22-11, 35-28, 54-46, 62-66

See here the statistics of the match