Euros Blog: More Chalk on Day 2

Roughly half the teams won, and roughly half the teams lost.

and

Dec 05, 2021

Every day throughout the European Championships 2021, we will be bringing you our most validated-by-nobody takes on the day’s action. People seem to enjoy reading it, and writing it is a laugh. What more justification could we possibly need?

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Great Britain 85 - 16 France (Women)

Mark’s Prediction: GB by 6
James’s Prediction: GB by 11

Did we underestimate GB or overestimate France? Do we just not know the landscape of the women’s game like we should? Probably a “yes” to all of these.

However you slice it, this one went to GB. Jude Hamer put up 20 points, outscoring France on her own, while they also got scoring contributions from 11 of 12 players, including international rookies Jade Atkin (9pts) and Niamh Horan (4pts).

France put the ball through the hoop 8 times in 40 minutes. I don’t have much material here.

Lithuania 41 - 81 Poland (Men)

Mark’s Prediction: Poland by 30
James’s Prediction: Poland by 23

When I mentioned Dominik Mosler only dropping 2 points against Switzerland yesterday, I didn’t realise that Poland’s four likely double-digit scorers apparently have a rota for who can chill for any given game.

Mosler put up 21, followed by 17 from Andrzej Macek and 12 from Krysztof Bandura, while it was Mateusz Filipski’s turn to have the night off and only drop 7 points.

Lithuania didn’t have the firepower to match up with the A-listers, as they were lead by 13 from Dalius Zymantas and 11 from Zymantas Bucinskas. One of those guys has the same surname as the other guy’s first name, which I never even considered was a thing outside of the English language. I once pitched to James a BU segment where we tried to run as many shared basketball player names together as we could to make the best player possible. The winners were:

Marquese Chris(s) Paul George Hill
Norris Cole Anthony Davis Bertans

Also, Lithuania’s bench was outscored 24-2 by an infamously shallow Poland reserves unit. Ouch.

Austria 41 - 73 Turkey (Men)

Mark’s Prediction: Turkey by 41
James’s Prediction: Turkey by 29

Ok, so James’s call was closer to the end differential, but do I get some credit for calling Turkey to win by the actual amount of points that Austria scored? (In my defense, after yesterday’s one-game sample, I never would have imaged Austria scoring 41)

No Gurbulak, no problem for Turkey. Mucahit Gunaydin scoring 23 on 11/11 shooting probably makes up for whatever wiggle room you would typically lose when your best player goes out. It was interesting to see Turkey only register 16 points on 33 shots, as the usual model is that every non-Gurbulak basket is assisted by the man himself, and 16 wouldn’t be an unusual number for him alone in any given game.

Austria don’t have enough individual talent to match Turkey’s ability to create decent looks, and that’s even with Ugur Toprak (probably Turkey’s best Gurbulak-lite) also not playing a second. Austria shot 31% from the game and got blown out despite taking 4 more shots than the Turks.

Switzerland 48 - 76 Spain (Men)

Mark’s Prediction: Spain by 24
James’s Prediction: Spain by 36

It was weird to see this one by 14-15 after one quarter and 30-34 at halftime. Spain must have also found it weird and resolved to make the second half be far more par for the course.

Jordi Ruiz was having none of it, sinking 31 points on 20 shot attempts, and Pincho Ortega followed up yesterday’s 14 with 14 more. Asier Garcia didn’t play today after being pushed hard against France in yesterday’s game, but Spain got comfortable eventually.

Switzerland had Maurice Amacher and Janic Binda shut all the way down, and the Swiss scoring burden fell to Schwan Wahab, who I have literally never heard of before today. That didn’t appear to phase him as he stepped up and scored 19. Well done to him.

Spain won the second half 42-18. There was a gap in competition, but having your main man out of the game and someone like Jordi stepping up big can only be a good sign going forward.

Netherlands 45-69 Great Britain (Men)

Another dominant win for GB, and another example of both of us underestimating the margin of victory. GB had too much quality and depth for a Netherlands team that didn’t get the scoring production from Korkmaz that kept them afloat yesterday, and couldn’t find anyone to replace it, with no one cracking double figures and the team shooting 28%.

GB showed why they’re favourites for the tournament again, leading from start to finish, rotating plenty and getting contributions right through the squad, evidenced by their 35 bench points.

Netherlands struggled to deal with GB's scoring early, with Gregg Warburton leading the game with 18 points, then had trouble finding the lineups to match up with GB's substitutions, but will take some consolation from an improved second half score into their game against Israel tomorrow. Next up for GB, probably outperforming our predictions, no matter what numbers we pick.

On a personal note, I had a lovely time sitting with GB fans to my left and Dutch fans to my right. My right ear is ringing due to a combination of some homemade percussive instruments, and the sound of cloggs on the bleachers (yeah, I know, you couldn’t make it up). All in all, a good time was had.

Netherlands 63 - 35 Germany (Women)

Mark’s Prediction: Netherlands by 8
James’s Prediction: Netherlands by 14

At one point, mid 3rd quarter, this game was 39-33 to the Netherlands, with the Germans staging a comeback on the back of an and-1 from Katharina Lang.

What happened after that? The Dutch ripped off a 15-1 run that made it 54-34 and never bothered to look back from there. All in all, they held Germany to 3 total points in the final quarter of what had been a competitive game for about 27 minutes.

The Kramer/Beijer combo was a slightly inefficient version of its usual, indisputable self, combining for 39 points on 46 shots. While by far not the most sensational performance the Dutch Double have ever put forward, it was more than enough to take care of a team that got 15 from Lang and a bunch of small change from the rest of the roster.

Germany really miss Mareike Miller, maybe enough that, for the first time in a long time, you’d struggle to make even the faintest case for them against the Netherlands in this tournament.

Spain 80 - 11 Turkey (Women)

Mark’s Prediction: Spain by 28
James’s Prediction: Spain by 30

General rule of the Bench Units Blog: If you want some coverage, don’t be the second team to win or lose a game by 69 points today. Give me something (other than a lamely amusing number) to work with.

France 55 - 69 Germany (Men)

Mark’s Prediction: Germany by 3
James’s Prediction: Germany by 9

Ah, the rare 15-point margin that was almost nothing like as close as it looked.

After putting in a strong performance while figuring out their lineups yesterday against Spain, France appeared to have learnt nothing about it’s most effective quintets and continued to tinker while a fully self-aware German team ran the score up on them in the first half.

Jens Albrecht put together one of his best performances I’ve seen in a while, running in consistently tough finishes for 16 points on only 9 shots. Even in a relatively quite game for Alex Halouski, Albrecht and Jan Haller were able to effectively play the roles of the bigs and convert inside, even against a French defense that has a pretty consistent spread of size. If that keeps up then Germany have an element that I don’t remember them having in the Halouski era.

France played hard but their offense really lacked purpose and execution compared to Germany. They got relatively balanced scoring but it was more a mechanism of endlessly looking for someone who was shooting well enough to create for anyone else, and Germany were more than happy to let them shoot from outside. If that proves to be the formula, they might be in for an uphill battle for that fifth spot.

Israel 48 - 64 Italy (Men)

Mark’s Prediction: Italy by 18
James’s Prediction: Italy by 15

Italy by 16. So close.

It was against weaker opposition again - although legitimately stronger than Austria were yesterday - but Italy seem intent on proving their formula that having enough size with enough varying skillsets will paper over enough of the cracks. That even sounds like an old Italian proverb.

Israel aren’t small by any means, but they didn’t really have answers for Italy’s multi-faceted bigs throughout the game. Filippo Carossino lead the way with 20, while personal favourite Sabry Bedzeti chipped in 10 and Andrea Giarretti paced a distinctly point guard-less squad with 10 assists.

Israel got 12 from Shay Barbibay and 10 from Amit Vigoda, but shot 36% overall. The difference is that all Israel could do was sub in different guys who play the same way, whereas the Italian roster at least offers some different looks in terms of inside/out configurations.

I don’t know if Italy are good, but watching them fly in the face of the 2020 approach to wheelchair basketball through speed and interchangeability is fascinating.

Up Tomorrow…

Sticking with the old Bench Units gimmick that we’ve used since 2018, We’re going to list out tomorrow’s schedule and our predictions for the results, based on almost nothing at all.

All game times are in Central European Time:

10:00am - Germany vs Spain (Women)
Mark: Germany by 20
James: Germany by 26

11:00am - Netherlands vs Israel (Men)
Mark: Netherlands by 15
James: Netherlands by 12

12:15pm - Spain vs Lithuania (Men)
Mark: Spain by 46
James: Spain by 39

1:15pm - France vs Netherlands (Women)
Mark: Netherlands by the bit from Space Jam where the scoreboard reads “Kinda one-sided, isn’t it?”
James: Netherlands by 76

2:30pm - Turkey vs Great Britain (Women)
Mark: GB by 78
James: GB by 76

3:30pm - Turkey vs Italy (Men)
Mark: Italy by 4
James: Italy by 9

4:45pm - Germany vs Poland (Men)
Mark: Poland by 6
James: Germany by 16

5:45pm - Great Britain vs Austria (Men)
Mark: GB by 53
James: GB by 58

7:00pm - France vs Switzerland (Men)
Mark: France by 19
James: France by 24

Hang tight, we’ll have some tight games and upsets soon! Days 1 & 2 are really just extended friendly tournaments anyway.

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