Euros Blog: German-Speakers Get Statement Wins

Just when this tournament looked to be turning out completely chalk, Germany claimed ownership of Group A and we might have an unexpected quarter-finalist.

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Dec 08, 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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France 70 - 71 Poland (Men)

Mark: France by 2
James: Poland by 8

Yo. This one was like watching Dodgems.

First up, France seemed to finally hit on the right starting lineup for the occasion. They rolled out Mehiaoui (whose name I’ve only just noticed ends in 5 consecutive vowels), Carlier, Jouanserre, Makambo and Guirassy. So glad I’m writing this instead of having to read these on the podcast.

The unfortunate thing for them is that, despite the solid play from their latest starting unit, they ran up against a team that doesn’t even have to ponder what 5 players to roll out, and barely spares a thought for whether they should let any of them rest.

Poland’s 40-minute deployment of one lineup turned out to be enough to get it done, just. There was some utter statistical pornography from them in this one. Check it:

Mosler: 24 points on 12/13 shooting, 10 rebounds
Filipski 27 points, 10 rebounds, 14 assists
Macek: 14 points on 50% shooting
Bandura: 6 points, 8 rebounds, 7 assists

Give France some credit for working their way back into a game in which Poland were firing on all cylinders. They got the ball to Jouanserre for a semi-decent shot as time ran out, but it came up short and he sat with his head in his hands as Poland celebrated having avoided Great Britain in the crossover.

I’m a long-time Jouanserre fan, so that was a tough moment to watch. There’s a chance these two teams meet again (most likely in the 5-8 placing), and I certainly wouldn’t complain about seeing the rematch.

Netherlands 82 - 53 Italy (Men)

Mark: Netherlands by 7
James: Netherlands by 12

So, I was watching the high-octane end to the previous game, hoping that I wasn’t missing anything good over on this stream. When I turned over, it was 48-26 and I was somewhere between relieved that I hadn’t missed anything good and a bit dejected that I didn’t have another game to flip on to.

Truth is, I toyed with putting Italy as the winner in my prediction for this one, but I know that Mendel is an avid reader and I didn’t want to spend the rest of my evening justifying the pick over WhatsApp. I probably landed on the right call for the wrong reasons, but I’ll take it.

Speaking of Mendel, he did his best Dominik Mosler impression by putting up 21 points on 12 shots. Italy have approximately 13 high-point players in their squad, and not one of them could do much to slow him down.

High points were in short supply for the Italians. Even if you consider Andrea Giaretti’s cartoonish handsomeness to be a highlight in and of itself, it’s a little bit dimmed by the fact he shot 3-12. Perhaps most troublingly, a team with that amount of size was outrebounded (27-31) by a team that spends a lot of time only playing one big.

France 21 - 66 Germany (Women)

Mark: Germany by 40
James: Germany by 34

Katharina Lang: good.

France: less so.

This one was an unpleasant viewing experience. Lang (23pts, 17reb, 6ast) is awesome , but she can’t really expect me to watch games like this just to see her wrecking the joint. Lena Knippelmeyer (15pts, 8reb)’s surname is also mildly hilarious, but I don’t need to watch the game to giggle at that.

Israel 56 - 57 Austria (Men)

Mark: Israel by 21
James: Israel by 16

Whaaaaaaaaat.

Austria have spent all tournament doing two things; struggling to top 20 points under any circumstances and getting shithoused by the other team’s bigs.

Considering that Israel’s only good players are bigs, they should have torn Austria apart like locusts in this one. For reasons that still escape my comprehension, that didn’t happen. It still kind of did, as Amit Vigoda and Asael Shabo combined for 37 points, but Austria had an answer in this one.

Hubert Hager (who played for Thuringia Bulls last I heard of him, but I don’t know that I’d ever seen play - for some reason he’s barely seen the floor for this sorry-ass Austria team) lead the way with 19 points and 7 rebounds. He looks a pretty complete big and, although Israel can technically match him for size, he was something of a one-man show in terms of exposing just how weak their lows are.

I still can’t fathom what happened to Israel here. They lost by 1 even when winning the final quarter 16-9.

Austria have just stamped their ticket to the quarter finals, giving them a (slim) chance at qualifying for worlds. They went ballistic after the game. Even I had to be a bit pleased for them.

Netherlands 78 - 17 Turkey (Women)

Mark: Netherlands by triple digits
James: Netherlands by 81

The Dutch women almost exactly matched the Dutch men’s scoreline from yesterday. That’s about all there is to this one.

Great Britain 52 - 56 Spain (Women)

Mark: GB by 18
James: GB by 22

Just when we think we’re getting pretty good at this predictions stuff, the GB women make us look daft. I hope they can live with themselves.

I watched this one from start to finish, feeling sure that GB would get on a run and take control. That they did, scoring 16 unanswered to lead by 13 at one point (that’s a quarter of all the points they scored in this game). When you look at it like that, it’s mental that Spain snuck this one out.

The book on Spain is that Zudaire, Perez and Alonso do most of the damage and don’t typically have enough support. Whoever wrote that book must have won a Pulitzer Prize or something, because those three put up 48 of Spain’s 56 points on a combined 58% shooting.

Even with a one-point lead going into the final quarter, GB couldn’t match Spain’s ability to get high-percentage looks in this one.

This is my prediction to be the bronze medal game. If it is then I’ll be interested to see what kind of psychological impact this result has for each team.

Spain 54 - 73 Germany (Men)

Mark: Spain by 5
James: Spain by 1

Again, predictions are more of an art than a science.

Case in point: Spain beat France by 3, Germany beat Poland by 2, Spain beat Poland by 25, Poland beat France by 1.

If you can manipulate any of those first four differentials in a way that leads you to predicting “Germany beat Spain by 19”, send me your details and I’ll add your profile to the Bench Units website. It’s great to have you on board.

For me, this game contained two x-factors that explain why this result came about the way it did. It comes down to the fact that Pincho Ortega had his weakest showing of the Europeans so far (6 points on 3/10 shooting) while Alex Halouski might have had his strongest (23 points, 9 rebounds, +18 in 24 minutes).

The stats from this one are wild. Germany took 11 more shots than Spain, while also winning the freethrow shootout in comical fashion (10/17 for Germany, 1/12 (8.5%) for Spain). Germany also out-shot Spain from 3 on both makes and attempts (7/22 vs 1/5).

With all those opportunity advantages, Germany got this win comfortably despite high-volume, low-efficiency scoring from both Boehme (29 points on 10/27) and Halouski (23 on 9/22).

Spain did not appear to have a unit that could stick with Germany in this game. Tough to tell if that will be a problem in a future encounter or if this is a game full of statistical anomalies that will normalise next time out.

Great Britain 20 - 0 Turkey (Men - Turkey Forfeit)

Mark: GB by 19.5
James: GB by 20.5

No stats for anyone. Neither team looked good, bad nor avergae. GB win. Hope Turkey are all doing ok.

Switzerland 63 - 29 Lithuania (Men)

Mark: Switzerland by default
James: Are there any winners in this one?

After a day of very exciting and interesting games, what a shame we had to end on this one.

Switzerland are one of only a couple of teams in this tournament that probably could put a 5-man unit on the floor that would be weak enough to give Austria a shot, but they opted not to do that and go for a conventional win instead. Typical.

Nobody from Lithuania scored in double digits, which is so bland that it makes Nicolaus Hausammann’s 16 points on 11 shots (to lead Switzerland) look like it should belong in that big block of stats I listed for Germany.

Thoroughly unimpressive on all fronts. My only worry is if I’ll actually be able to write any more than this if they play off in a placement game a few days from now.

Up Tomorrow…

Full schedule not released yet. Stay tuned…

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