Euros Blog: Contenders Starting to Separate Themselves?
Some teams look like clear favourites, some teams look like they're best suited to beating up weaker teams. There are three top-tier teams, and two more qualification spots up for grabs.
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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Turkey 0 - 20 Israel (Men - Turkey Forfeit)
Mark’s Prediction: Israel by 19
James’s Prediction: Israel by 21
Turkey are out of the tournament and so this game goes to Israel by default. Although the result was never in doubt, this now puts Israel in a position to make the quarter-finals and at least have a shot at finishing 5th to qualify for the World Championships. It’s a long shot, but they must like their odds a dam-site more than they did.
In basketball news, nobody played particularly well, badly, or in any conceivable way at all in this one.
Germany 86 - 43 Switzerland (Men)
Mark’s Prediction: Germany by 32
James’s Prediction: Germany by 31
Ooft. This was a touch watch.
The briefest glance at this boxscore will confirm that, no matter what she might tell you, size matters.
Germany were led by 28 points from Alex Halouski (who has been quiet this tournament, while getting 15 from Mattias Guntner and 13 from some German guy by the name of Yosef Bëstvik. If inside scoring isn’t enough, the three max-height 4.5’s also combined for 28 rebounds. That’s three more than the entire Swiss roster.
Switzerland got 20 points from Mo Amacher, but couldn’t keep up given the size disadvantage.
Netherlands vs Great Britain (Women)
Mark’s Prediction: Netherlands by 23
James’s Prediction: Netherlands by 23
Anyone with a shred of knowledge about women’s wheelchair basketball will know that GB, along with most of the other teams in the world, have had few answers for the Dutch combo of Beijer and Kramer more or less since the Earth cooled.
Given that the British girls are missing a couple of high-classification veterans, I would have been surprised if this had been the game where they’d finally cracked the code.
The Dutch Double combined for 50 points and 19 rebounds, and Kramer was a +34 in her 32 minutes. The Netherlands won every quarter, and never took the pressure off when GB got experimental with lineups. For what it’s worth, the lineup with Laurie Williams as the primary ball-handler and the two young 4.5’s held up relatively well for GB, but asking Lucy Robinson and Jade Atkin to shut down the world-beating Dutch bigs felt like a tall order.
Lithuania 34 - 92 France (Men)
Mark’s Prediction: France by 34
James’s Prediction: France by 25
If there was ever a game that a team was set up to dominate while answering almost none of the questions that their prior losses have raised, this was the one.
France harrassed a Lithuania team that couldn’t match their speed and general ferocity, putting on a press that mitigated their size disadvantage completely.
Sofyane Mehiaoui, who has wavered between nondescript and unwatchable up to this point, got to the basket repeatedly and put up 20 points on 8/13 shooting. Despite that, his +/- rating of 20 was actually the second-lowest on the squad, which is a fairly decent indicator that whatever France threw at the wall was sticking.
I’ve griped on here about France switching lineups without much rhyme or reason, and I’m going to officially campaign for them to throw some more minutes to Remi Bayle. They’ve got big 3.0’s coming out of their ears, but this guy is low-maintenance and doesn’t really make mistakes. He seems like the consistency that they need.
Lithuania aren’t good. That will be all.
Spain 76 - 26 France (Women)
Mark: Spain by 18
James: Spain by 21
Spain, by several.
This is by a long way the most convincing that Spain have looked during the competition, but there should be a glacier-sized grain of salt along with that when you consider that I genuinely couldn’t tell you a single thing that France did in this game, or any of the others so far.
Spain’s bigs dominated inside, and that was more or less it.
Germany 56 - 29 Turkey (Women)
Mark’s Prediction: Germany by 39
James’s Prediction: Germany by 48
Katharina Lang was once again the most dominant force in this game, even when she played slightly less than 20 minutes.
Lang had 17 points and 6 rebounds, while Anne Patzwald had one of the most unique statlines I’ve ever seen (1 rebound, 1 steal and 2 personal fouls for a +24 rating). Ultimately, Germany cruised against a team that had a higher number in the turnovers column (24) than in the field goal percentage one (21).
Austria 17 - 79 Netherlands (Men)
Mark: Netherlands by just few enough to leave me concerned for Mendel
James: Netherlands by 14
Maybe I’m overreacting, but I find it hard to feel concerned about the Netherlands after today.
Austria scored 6 points in the opening quarter, and that turned out to be the most points they scored in any 10-minute stretch. That’s also the same number that their leading scorer, Mehmet Hayirli, finished the game with. Andreas Steiner was a -53 (!) in 30 minutes. Austria had the previous low score in the men’s tournament, with 19 against Italy. They outdid themselves. Anyone who listens between the lines on Bench Units might have an idea as to why I can’t help but revel just a little bit.
Meanwhile, the Dutch forwards willingly obliged in extending Austria’s pattern of getting walloped inside. 50 paint points, 18 offensive rebounds, 25 assists on 32 makes, 52 points coming from 4 players of classification >=3.5.
Similar to France against Lithuania, this game probably doesn’t represent all issues being solved for the Netherlands, but it is proof that they have the scoring threats that they’ll need going forward.
Poland 58 - 83 Spain (Men)
Mark: Poland by 3
James: Spain by 6
Call this sour grapes from the guy who called Poland by 3, but the 25-point margin does not do justice to what a rollercoaster this game was.
The first quarter was probably the most physical display so far this tournament, ending in a 17-26 advantage for Spain in which Andrzej Macek and Pincho Ortega dueled with 12 points apiece.
One of James’s favourite gimmicks is the “Best Player in the World” belt, which you can only earn by outplaying the current holder of the belt in a game in which they are also playing. I don’t know who had it or how they got it coming into this one, but Macek and Pincho basically exchanged it every possession in the first half, all the way to a 33-36 halftime score.
That all changed in the second half, when Asier Garcia came off the Spanish bench to claim the belt for good. He’s played sparingly after spending the first half of the season semi-injured, but the whole game changed when he checked in.
Spain won each of the final quarters by 11 points, out-executing Poland on seemingly every offense and basically never getting anything other than a pristine look.
For the second game in a row, Poland started to look gassed in the second half, not helped by the fact that Dominik Mosler struggled with his touch against such a tall and physical Spanish side.
If Spain can keep Garcia fresh and bring him in to play crucial stretches, look the hell out.
Italy 40 - 61 Great Britain (Men)
Mark: GB by 17
James: GB by 22
When GB opened the game with a 15-2 first quarter, I worried that they were going to make mine and James’s predictions look flat-out stoopid.
Luckily for us, both teams had our back and spent the next three quarters with some level of agreement that GB would just let Italy struggle at arms-length.
GB have started the Tokyo lineup (Choudhary, Manning, Harry Brown, Warburton, Jama) so far this tournament, and used the 2018 Worlds lineup (Manning, Pratt, both Browns, Warburton) as a USA-style change-of-pace pressing unit to deploy in the second quarter. With Abdi sitting this game out, they leant hard on the Worlds unit in this one and it was the perfect foil for the mobility-challenged Italians.
Italy really can’t afford to get into holes like this, as they lack the offensive creation to get out of them. Giulio Papi lead them with 13 - do enough people know about him? He’s a really good, complete player - and they even got 10 points from this retirement home version of Matteo Cavagnini. It wasn’t enough to keep them in the game, although I think they did show a legitimately strong defense that made GB quite uncomfortable in the half-court.
Weird stat: Simon Brown took 10 shots in this game.
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 - France vs Poland (Men)
Mark: France by 2
James: Poland by 8
11:00am - Netherlands vs Italy (Men)
Mark: Netherlands by 7
James: Netherlands by 12
12:15pm - France vs Germany (Women)
Mark: Germany by 40
James: Germany by 34
1:15pm - Israel vs Austria (Men)
Mark: Israel by 21
James: Israel by 16
2:30pm - Netherlands vs Turkey (Women)
Mark: Netherlands by triple digits
James: Netherlands by 81
3:30pm - Great Britain vs Spain (Women)
Mark: GB by 18
James: GB by 22
4:45pm - Spain vs Germany (Men)
Mark: Spain by 5
James: Spain by 1
5:45pm - Great Britain vs Turkey (Men)
Mark: GB by 19.5
James: GB by 20.5
7:00pm - Switzerland vs Lithuania (Men)
Mark: Switzerland by default
James: Are there any winners in this one?
That will be all for today. If you didn’t do it earlier in the article, please click at least one of these and allow me to feel validated: