ANTWERP (FIBA EuroBasket 2017 Qualifiers) - Belgium clinched on Saturday night their fourth win in as many games in Group A of the FIBA EuroBasket 2017 Qualifiers and will secure first place if they beat Switzerland on Wednesday.

The Belgians have actually put themselves in such a comfortable position, that they could lose both their remaining games and still finish top of Group A, provided they preserve the favourable point differential in the head-to-head with Iceland.

"We had discussed beforehand that we were going to try to get six wins and that remains the goal of the team. It is something of a private thing we agreed together." - De Zeeuw

But as fiba.com found out when talking to Maxime De Zeeuw, the Belgian Lions do not feel that their work here is done. On the contrary, the EWE Baskets Oldenburg power forward explained, Belgium will be a team on a mission until the last minute of the qualifying campaign on 17 September.

FIBA.com: What Belgium is one step away from achieving, a fourth consecutive trip to FIBA EuroBasket Final Round, feels perhaps more rewarding when you see some surprising results elsewhere in the Qualifiers?
De Zeeuw: In this competition you play six games in just over two weeks so you have to stay 100% focused and careful in every single game, you cannot relax or underestimate opponents at any point. It might seem easy to people on the outside, but we won four out of four only because we are so focused and we want to win so much. A team like Germany losing after triple overtime is of course a surprise, but even if you are a big nation you cannot afford to lose focus. You need to prove that you are best team of your group on the floor, and you can only do that if you play with the right mentality. That’s what we tried to do this summer, everyone was saying that Belgium was the favourite in this group but from the first moment I said that we’re only going to be favourites if we earn it on the court, and we’ve done that so far.

FIBA.com: You sound like you still want to maintain this level of focus, will you only consider your mission is accomplished if you wrap it up on Wednesday?
De Zeeuw: Our mission is still far from complete and will not be completed on Wednesday, even if we win. We had discussed beforehand that we were going to try to get six wins and that remains the goal of the team. Of course the first step is to beat Switzerland so we secure first place and so we get a win at home for our fans, but we really want to win in Iceland too and finish 6-0. It is something of a private thing we agreed together.

FIBA.com: What prompted this private pact?
De Zeeuw: It has more to do with the fact everybody was talking about us having five important players out (Sam Van Rossom, Axel Hervelle, Matt Lojeski, Quentin Serron, Wen Mukubu, Pierre-Antoine Gillet) and having a lot of youngsters on the team, so we want to prove that although we’re playing without our best players, our national team remains good and that Belgium is becoming a basketball nation.

De Zeeuw and Jonathan Tabu, seen here celebrating at FIBA EuroBasket 2015, as well as Lionel Bosco assumed the role of mentors to the youngsters this summer

FIBA.com: Speaking of the youngsters, did you expect this level of performances in this campaign from the five players below the age of 23?
De Zeeuw: I did not know what to expect, because when I left Belgium they were still not playing in the first division. But once I started practising with them every day I understood that they have a good mentality, they are fighters like the rest of the team and they want to win. I think that is our main quality as a team, we are a group of fighters and the young guys fit right into this and showed that they deserved to be there.

FIBA.com: So although you are only 29 years old you became a veteran on the national team. How did you treat the rookies as somebody with over 100 international caps and did you make a conscious decision to embrace the role of the veteran?
De Zeeuw: What I tried to do, together with [Jonathan] Tabu and [Lionle] Bosco, was to talk to the young players about everything from the refereeing criteria to the trips, because they had not played this kind of international games before. With the experience I have, I’ve tried to do it to the best of my ability and behave as a veteran both on and off the court. They wanted to listen and learn, so everything worked out perfectly. It is a completely new role for me, but I have enjoyed it.

FIBA.com: Despite all the new personnel, Belgium showed the same style of play and the same team identity as in the past years, you are the best defensive team in the Qualifiers giving up only 59.5 points on average in the four first games. How do you explain that?
De Zeeuw: That’s because this is the identity of the coach [Eddy Casteels]. He’s been at the helm for 11-12 years now and he’s always started from defence all these years. If you don’t play defence, regardless of whether you are a rookie or a veteran, you’re going to the bench and think a little bit. You can have a good day or a bad day on offence, but if you are not playing your best defence you are going to be benched. That’s why we’re trying to suffocate our opponents on defence and our numbers are so good.

FIBA.com: So the first thing the youngsters heard was ‘play defence, or else’?
De Zeeuw: (He laughs) We didn’t need to tell them anything, they knew after the first practices that it is all about defence, energy and trying as a team to stop the opponent.

FIBA