ROUEN (FIBA Basketball World Cup 2019 European Qualifiers) - A balanced France bottled up Bosnia and Herzegovina's top weapon with a strong defensive performance in picking up an 84-65 victory to finish the first FIBA Basketball World Cup 2019 European Qualifiers window with a 2-0 record. 

Bosnia's star teenager Dzanan Musa missed all eight of his shots in scoring just one point and dishing just three assists while Louis Labeyrie paced six French players in double figures with 13 points. 

Turning point: France were leading by just two points before going on a 12-3 run over a six-minute span to pull away for 51-40 lead. Bosnia got within 53-47 late in the third quarter but Paul Lacombe converted a four-point play to start an 8-2 spurt and the lead was 61-49 heading into the final frame. The guests never got closer than nine points in the fourth. 

Game hero: Edwin Jackson only tallied 11 points for France but did pick up a team-high 8 rebounds to go with 3 assists, 1 steal and helping out frustrate Musa's offensive game. 

Stats don't lie: France never allowed Bosnia and Herzegovina to get into their offense and held them to 36 percent shooting from the field. The hosts also took advantage of their size advantage with 40 points in the paint compared to 22 for the visitors, who dropped to 1-1 in the group. 

Game notes: France used an early 15-2 run to take a commanding 17-6 lead. The Bosnians did not give up, trimming it to 19-12 by the end of the first quarter. They tied the game at 31-31 and the score was 39-34 for France at intermission and 39-37 before the French began to pull away for good.

They said it: "We are very happy about the win. That is exactly what we came for this whole week, that's what we worked for. It's just a result. It's satisfying in of itself but also happy about how we did it, the way we won - being able to play good basketball today, play good defense both games. Against Belgium it was better in the second half. But today we played pretty good defense the whole game. So we are pretty satisfied. We saw a team that was very unselfish, played together. I think we had six players that had more than 10 points. So it's a really good indicator that the team is playing good together in a good spirit." - France captain Boris Diaw

"In basketball you can win and you can lose. The French team deserved to win today. I congratulate them for the win. This French team is very good, it's much better than the last team. They fight and have better chemistry as a team and play better together. They fought through the whole game. Even though they are missing some players they are stronger than our younger team. We showed two faces in this game today. We were much better in the first half. I'm not pleased with how we played today. I'm not happy with the effort. They scored a lot of points on last second shots. When you look at our three-point shot percentage it doesn't look that bad but the shots that we made the timing was not that important when we made those shots. From this game we have to learn a lot. This is a big opportunity for all of us, especially our young players to gain experience. For them this game was one of the best schools of basketball in Europe. This Competition System and qualification is one of the best schools for these players for them to gain experience. There is no free school anywhere, especially a good school. In the future we will try to play a much better 40 minutes than we did today." - Bosnia and Herzegovina head coach Dusko Vujosevic

FIBA