MONTEVIDEO (FIBA AmeriCup 2017) - Dominican Republic ended their participation at the Montevideo series with a 72-56 loss against the United States. Although the Caribbean team went to their last game doing their best to qualify, the Group’s toughest rival demonstrated their finalist pedigree once more.

The Dominicans’ first defeat forced them to beat Panama with an overwhelming force after an array of individual high-performances (Delgado, Liz and Rojas were the most outstanding) that put their part to play several minutes of collective consistency. Later on, United States were the clear winners.

Víctor Liz talked about the experience lived in Montevideo: “We thank God for the opportunity to play in such an important AmeriCup. It's true that things didn’t happen like we wish they did, we know there's a lot to improve, and very soon we’ll have very important objectives to achieve our best basketball.”

The first clash in Group C for Melvyn López’s squad was against Uruguay, and it clearly marked a great deal of their path; taking into consideration the favoritism that existed before the tournament began for the qualification of Jeff van Gundy’s men.

Their defeat against the hosts left no margin of error available for the Antillean side. Overall, the Dominicans ended with a balance of one victory and two defeats; a result that should be analyzed in context, and considering that the team’s potential that could clearly grow in the future. For the upcoming qualifiers, there will be international figures added:

“We have a young group and little time to prepare, but one must always look at the bright side of everything. The championship level was very good at this FIBA AmeriCup 2017, that I'm sure will be more and more important as time goes by,” Liz assured.

Regarding statistic aspects, Víctor Liz was his national team’s star shooter with an average of 12.7 points, Gabriel Solano did 4.3 assists per game, while Sadiel Rojas (9.7) and Ángel Delgado (8.3) were the greatest rebounders for the Dominican Republic.

FIBA