Tokyo 2020 Wheelchair Basketball: Day 3 Round-Up
Some big results and some very real indicators of how the groups might shake out.
Every day throughout the Tokyo 2020 Paralympics, I will be bringing you a round-up of the goings-on in the Wheelchair Basketball event. My Bench Units co-host, James MacSorley, is actually competing in the Paralympics and so has better things to do than write up details of the games.
As you may know, the Tokyo Paralympics are taking place in Tokyo. Tokyo is 8 hours ahead of the UK, so some of the games are happening in the dead of the night for me.
I’m making it my mission to watch as many of the games as I can so I can do the best possible write-ups here. If I don’t get the chance to watch a game, I’ll state that up front and my review will be based on the stats, plus any educated guesses I might have, or anything that sounds plausible enough that I can say I heard it from James and blame him if it’s incorrect. I promise I’m not biased for or against any teams.
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Let’s get into it…
Important Takeaway from Day 3
DISCLAIMER: While writing yesterday’s Up Tomorrow… section, I was painfully aware of how crap all of my predictions had been the day before, so I roped in some help.
My fortune-teller-for-hire asked to remain nameless and said they’d only do it if I passed the predictions off as my own and took any of the associated heat. Turns out they were much better and predictions than I am, so I feel bad claiming any of the calls.
I’ll honour their wish to be anonymous, but let’s just say it’s someone who was only up for being roped in because they’re as lost without James as I am. It’s not a long list.
Anyway, to stuff!
Canada 61 - 35 Japan (Women)
1am UK Time. Did not watch.
Yesterday’s prediction: Canada by 28
My anonymous predictor gets right to work, almost nailing it first time as Canada take a 26-point win over the host team.
The main takeaway here is that Kady Dandeneau continued her “I should have been a Bench Units One To Watch” revenge tour, leading the way for Canada with 19 points in just 21 minutes.
Dandeneau and Canadian 1.5 point player Tara Llanes came off the bench, complementing a balanced offensive effort from their starting 5 by going with a very Dandeneau-centric offense in the second unit. You don’t see it as much in the game now, because coaches are so keen for even low pointers to be scoring threats, but the way that Llanes is out there to create opportunities for her forward is really cool to see. Never met a big who wouldn’t want her as a teammate.
Not much to report from Japan, as Canada absolutely put the clamps on Mari Amimoto, who’s been Japan’s main source of shot creation all tournament. As a result, Japan only shot 26% from the floor. Tough look.
It’s only a couple of games in, but Canada have been the most consistent of the womens’ teams so far. Another win or two and they might be knocking on the door of being the favourites.
Algeria 37 - 83 Australia (Men)
1am UK Time. Did not watch.
Yesterday’s prediction: Australia by 22
Prediction was way off on this one. Can’t get the staff.
Australia are good, Algeria not so much. Algeria’s guys who you’d expect to carry them did their best, but both struggled with turnovers under Australia’s defensive pressure.
On the Australian side, they got double-digit scoring from four of their guys and solid contributions from everybody else. I can’t dispute this fully, as I didn’t see the game, but Australia having 35 assists on 36 makes has me wondering who these generous stat-keepers are. Some club teams would pay good money to have those guys do stats for their home games. “We can make your statlines look sweet“ could be a real ace in the hole if you’re trying to convince a star player to sign with you. Algeria should look into it.
Don’t have much more for this one. Australia look class.
Netherlands 109 - 18 Algeria (Women)
3:15am UK Time. Did not watch.
Yesterday’s prediction: Netherlands by 52
Well, not often you have a 52-point call end up as a drastic undersell. Lesson is to always pick the over when the reigning world champions are playing the day after a loss.
All 12 of the Dutch women played at least 8 minutes, and all of them had a plus/minus score between 21 and 58 (Cher Korver - +58 in 23 minutes!). On the flip-side, one Algerian woman played the full 40 minutes and so was a -91. It makes complete logical sense, but I still did a double-take when I saw that number on the statsheet.
Absolute statistical indecency from all over the Netherlands roster, with the team coming away with totals of 40 assists and 49 rebounds. With numbers like that, the fact that Mariska Beijer had 33 points on 75% shooting almost feels like an afterthought.
Turkey 77 - 73 Canada (OT) (Men)
3:15am UK Time. Did not watch and am sad about it.
Yesterday’s prediction: Turkey by 2, in OT (seriously, go back and check)
My undercover informant’s ability to reliably come 2 points away from a spot-on prediction was undeniable at this point. Even more mental considering that the prediction for this game came off the back of the question “shall we pick one to go to overtime?”. Ridiculous.
Cannot believe I missed this one. What the hell. I spent yesterday writing about how difficult Canada are to believe in, and then you see results like this and wonder how you even dare not watch them put a scare into somebody.
The first thing that jumped out to me was Canada winning the rebounding contest 49-32, which seems a bit steep considering Turkey’s advantage in most games, outside of an unmatched level of fury, is size across the board. Makes more sense when you see that Pat Anderson went out and got 22 rebounds for himself. Having the best player of all time turn his attention to a single facet of the game is a good way to balance out a size disadvantage, especially if he can do it while getting 24 points.
Turkey didn’t finish off of Gurbulak’s passes as well as they did yesterday, but they did enough to get it done. Their plan seems to be to let him get his usual 25-30 every game and fill in the gaps as best they can. Their complementary guys also made the freethrows that put the game away. Wonder if the statisticians at this tournament will find a way to give Gurbulak the assists on those.
Shout-out to Nik Goncin for a nuts statline: 33 points, 15 rebounds, 11 assists. Yo.
Spain 74 - 58 Colombia (Men)
6:45am
Yesterday’s prediction: Spain by 8
Final score doesn’t do this one justice. 2-point game after 3 quarters before Spain took it away (20-6) in the last 10 minutes.
Colombia battle hard, but didn’t have enough in the tank to go against the waves of Spanish size. My guy Diaz did his bit to match up to them, but you can see the effect that Spain’s consistent size has in stats like Jhoan Vargas, who’s been finishing well all tournament, going 0/9 from the floor.
Interesting wrinkle from Spain this time out: the 3-big unit of Asier Garcia, Alejandro Zarzuela, Pincho Ortega (a BU favourite), Dani Stix and Oscar Onrubia. Haven’t seen this unit from Spain before, and 3-big/2-low lineups have been going out of fashion in Europe for a while now, but I really like this one. Having multiple 1.0s or 1.5s on the court is usually too much of a mismatch risk for teams to be comfortable with, but Stix and Onrubia are tough, physical dudes. Be interested to see what other teams they’ll give this a run-out against.
For Colombia, they got solid scoring from Diaz (18pts), Jose Leep and Jhon Hernandez (17 each), but only 4 points from the rest of the squad. Not going to cut it against Spain. One more source of points for Colombia could have broken up that Spanish run.
Germany 71 - 59 Great Britain (Men)
6:45am
Yesterday’s prediction: GB by 4
Man, this got out of hand in short order. It was a three-point game at the half. I used the break to get up and get ready, then came back to find GB down by 15. Germany won the third quarter 26-15, and the rest of the game was almost a draw.
This tournament as a whole has seemed to me as a lot of teams taking a step towards incorporating three-point shooting as a more prominent feature in their offense. It makes complete sense. Most teams shoot around 5 of them a game, so if you shoot a couple more than that and make them, it’s a pretty obvious path to racking up points they’ll struggle to match.
Germany took that theory to the extreme, making 7 (seven!) threes before GB made one. That’s effectively a mystery box being opened and having 21 free points in it. On top of that, Thomas Bohme followed up his performance against the USA by taking on a novel strategy of just deciding to not miss any of his shots. He was so good that Germany survived another invisible performance from Alex Halouski. Weird pattern that they’ve played so well despite his struggles, but they also got a solid 10-minute stretch from Matthias Gunter, who may be the most physically imposing 22-year-old I’ve ever seen in a senior tournament.
GB didn’t seem to be able to key in on what worked for them in this game, as it was the second game in a row where Germany handled the press really well and refused to get rattled by speed and pressure. With their defense not setting the tone as much as they typically rely on, GB got relatively balanced scoring but on a low percentage (41%). Terry Bywater and Gaz Choudhry leading the team in shot attempts makes sense, as they’re the primary options in their respective units, but I’d say there has to be an emphasis on getting Gregg Warburton more than 9 shots in 40 minutes. On the positive side, I thought that player-coach Gaz’s willingness to tinker and roll out tweaked lineups was a great sign for the rest of the tournament. The result hurts, but the process might have given real value.
A close loss and a convincing win against two of the tournament favourites, and they might still have a gear in them. Watch out.
I.R. Iran 41 - 65 USA (Men)
9am UK Time
Yesterday’s prediction: USA by 22
Our psychic-as-long-as-its-out-by-2 prediction machine strikes again! USA were up by exactly 22 with a minute left, when Jorge Sanchez sunk two freethrows to keep the out-by-2 streak alive. This kind of stuff is why we watch the Paralympics.
I more or less wrote Iran’s eulogy yesterday, and I remain convinced that they won’t make the quarter-finals (at full strength, I had them making it over Germany, so seemed to take that personally), but they have real talent and spirit, and didn’t roll over in any way against a vastly more established and experienced American squad.
The USA still made their way to a comfortable win, riding a balanced attack orchestrated by Steve Serio (12 points, 11 assists). I in no way take away from the quality of the USA’s offense when I say that we’ve officially caught out the generous statisticians at this tournament, as they’ve given the USA 31 assists on 30 made shots.
Mohammadhassan Sayari led Iran with 17 points and 14 rebounds. Good player, would be great playing his natural role as a reserve big behind Iran’s best guys.
Spain 29 - 46 China (Women)
9am UK Time
Yesterday’s prediction: China by 12
China continue to defend the title of best team at winning ugly. It is a skill and it should be respected but, my days. The Turkey vs Canada mens’ game was only 10 minutes longer than this one, and the combined store was literally double!
I don’t have much on this one. There’s not much analysis to be done when one team holds the other to 10 made shots.
I guess the question at this point is whether China will be overmatched by teams with top-level offensive firepower (e.g. USA, Canada), or whether they’ll even be able to drag those teams into a rock fight. If they can do that, it’s anyone’s game.
Japan 59 - 52 Republic of Korea (Men)
12:30pm UK Time
Yesterday’s prediction: Japan by 2
Carrying on with the theme of playing ugly, we got a real ugliness contest in this one.
Like any good slobber-knocker, Japan one this one on the back of their bigs making shots, with Reo Fujimoto and Kei Akita chipping in 21 and 17, respectively. They also completely neutralised Dong Hyeon Gim, who’s been monstrous inside for Korea in the previous games.
The old saying is “styles make fights”, but it was kind of interesting to watch two very similar teams go against each other and try and figure out where their advantages were. Kind of like shadow-boxing in your mirror, or fighting your evil twin and convincing yourself that you have the advantage because you know all their moves.
Japan won this one and it looks like, after three close losses to good teams, Korea haven’t done enough yet to establish themselves as significantly better than either Canada or Colombia. Two of those teams are going to miss out on the quarter-finals, and that doesn’t seem fair. To say Group B was meant to be the murderer’s row of the tournament, the last spot in Group A (and the right to get walloped by the winner of Group B) is a great battle.
For Japan, it’s really cool to see that they’ve decided to just simplify the offense and not try and carry on with all their fancy and ultimately inconsequential player movement. They play much more decisively now, and get better shots earlier in the shot clock because of it. They could still finish better, but I buy the improvement.
Great Britain 35 - 53 Germany (Women)
12:30pm UK Time
Yesterday’s prediction: Germany by 15
Our scoreboard oracle is losing their touch. Off by 3 instead of 2 this time. I could have been that wrong.
Really tough note for me to close this write-up on, as this game was truly a tough watch even though I try to watch these games with no real rooting interest.
The GB Women, for whatever reason, look the most like they’ve been shaken by the way the pandemic has affected their training over the last 18 months. As someone who’s used their new working environment to excuse my professional underperformances numerous times in that same span, I don’t blame anybody for struggling to adapt, especially when your job fundamentally relies on being within 2 metres of people.
Whatever the case, GB had no answer for either Mareike Miller (21 pts/18 reb/6 ast) or Katharina Lang (16 pts/12 reb/9 ast), who got wherever they wanted and didn’t waste a lot of opportunities. Lang, in particular, seemed to get the most out of every German possession in the first half.
Germany finished with 53 total points on 36% shooting, which leads me to believe that GB’s defense is at least doing a passable job of slowing other teams down (outside of the two leading scorers, no German player had more than 6 points). The British offense seems to be the problem, and their doesn’t seem to be an obvious fix outside of making more shots. GB play Australia in their final pool game, and their last chance to make the quarter-finals.
Up Tomorrow…
Borrowing an old Bench Units gimmick that myself and Ben Fox (also in Tokyo - really need some colleagues who aren’t too good for me) used for the World Championships in 2018, I’m going to list out tomorrow’s schedule and my predictions for the results, based on almost nothing at all.
1am - Turkey vs Spain (Men) - Spain by 9
1am - USA vs China (Women) - USA by 16
3:15am - Australia vs Germany (Men) - Australia by 6
3:15am - Algeria vs Spain (Women) - Spain by 21
6:45am - Japan vs Canada (Men) - Japan by 11
6:45am - Algeria vs I.R. Iran (Men) - Iran by 25
9am - Germany vs Canada (Women) - Canada by 13
9am - Great Britain vs USA (Men) - USA by 14
12:30pm - Australia vs Great Britain (Women) - Australia by 3
12:30pm - Republic of Korea vs Colombia (Men) - Korea by 8
That’s all from me! If you’re staying up to watch, I salute you and get a life.
Great to read that all, I learn a lot from that and I appreciate being able to watch many games without staying up at night.
Thanks!!!