A round-up from Madrid, Spain of the fourth day of action at the 2021 European Championships.
Women’s Competition
The Netherlands secured their semi-final spot in the women’s competition with a confident performance over Great Britain to remain unbeaten. The unstoppable duo of Bo Kramer and Mariska Beijer hitting 29 points and 21 points, respectively, assisted the Netherlands to their third win, 74-44.
An important game for both Spain and France if they were to keep their hopes alive for the semi-finals and a ticket to Dubai for next year’s World Championship. Both teams started tentatively, however, boosted by the vocal support of the home crowd, Spain soon found their rhythm and capitalised on some extensive defensive pressure to take control of the game and win all four quarters to take the game, 76-26. France must defeat both Turkey and Germany to have any chance of progressing to the semi-finals.
Germany used their game against the bottom of the table Turkey to give valuable minutes to all 12 players. The German Head Coach Dirk Passiwan rotated all his line-ups with 30 points coming off the bench to help the Germans to a 56-27 victory.#
Netherlands versus Austria at the 2021 European Championships. Photo Credit: SA Images.
Men’s Competition
The first three games of the men’s competition on Day 4 of the 2021 European Championships turned out to be one-sided affairs, with Germany beating Switzerland 86-43, France defeating Lithuania 92-34, and the Netherlands overcoming Austria 72-17.
The last two were the more anticipated games. Poland fought back from an 11-point deficit in the first half of their game against Spain to bring the game back to just one point at half-time. Spain captain Asier Garcia then entered the game for the first time in the third quarter, after sitting out their last two games, impacting the game immediately and steering his side home, 83-58.
In the top of the table clash in Group A, Great Britain and Italy found it difficult to make a basket early on ending with a low scoring first quarter of 15-2 to GB. Italy won the second quarter, but never really threatened the GB lead and could not keep up with the dynamism of the World Champions, as GB managed the game to win 61-40.
The win for Great Britain means they remain the only unbeaten team in Group B and sit top, whilst Spain and Germany are both 4-0 in Group A before they play each other tomorrow with the winner taking top spot going into the quarter-finals.
Tomorrow (Wednesday 8 December ) will see the final group games in the men’s competition to finalise who makes the last 8 and the penultimate day of competition for the women. Follow all the action via the 2021 European Championships event page.
Photo Credit: Steffie Wunderl Photography/SA Images
