FIBA EuroBasket 2011 Day 4 Review – Finland and Ukraine record their first wins: Part-1
Finland 92 – Bosnia and Herzegovina 64
It was a case of third time lucky for the Finland, who much to the joy of a rapturous crowd recorded their first win of the 2011 EuroBasket by taking down Bosnia and Herzegovina 92-64 on Saturday.
The Finish side was led by a balanced attack with five players scoring in the double figures. The strength on the offense was epitomized by a 55 percent shooting from the floor and to complement that, they committed only 8 turnovers
as compared to 16 by the Bosnians.
Mikko Koivisto led Finland with 17 points, Petteri Koponen punctuated 14, Gerald Lee had 12 while Tukka Kotti and Hannu Motolla finished with 10 apiece. The Bosnians were led by Henry Domercant‘s 25 points.
The game started on an even note. The Finish side took the lead early, but never went ahead by four throughout the frame, which finished at 24-20 in their favour. An evenly contested second quarter followed as the teams headed
for the locker room with Finland leading by 42-38.
After a tight first half, the game changed shape drastically in the third quarter. Finland hit the ground running and scorched the Bosnians with a 34 point blitz to take a 76-56 lead into the last frame. Things didn’t change much
after that as Finland rolled on to an emphatic 28 point win, putting Bosnia in danger of a knockout in case of a tie breaker.
Ukraine 67 – Bulgaria 56
For some of the teams in the EuroBasket 2011, the competition is not much about winning it all, as it about achieving some milestones in doing so.
One of those teams is Ukraine, which on Saturday night finished a 10-year long wait and recorded their first win of championship by defeating Bulgaria 67-56. After this result, both the teams are now tied with a 1-2 record with
two games left to play. Stiven Bertt and Oleksandr Kolchenko were the stars of the game for Ukraine. The duo combined for 35 points on the night. However, it was not the effort, but the precision of it, that left everyone bewitched.
Oleksandr Kolchenko has a perfect game from the floor with 18 points and not a single miss from the field until the last two minutes when he drained a three.
After an even first quarter, Ukraine pulled away early in the second quarter with a 10-2 spurt. They kept on storming through the Bulgarian defense in the third quarter and stretched their lead to as many as 16 late in the frame.
They however got a big scare as Bulgaria reeled off a 13-2 run and got to within seven with 4 1/2 minutes to go in the fourth. However, Kolchenko stemmed the tide with a three and the Ukrainians never looked back.
The Bulgarians shot at 28 percent from the field and were led by Chavdar Kostov and Filip Videnov with 10 points each.
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