FIBA – Men’s Day 5 Group B Round-Up

BEIJING (Olympics) - Were Greece capable of handling the 18,000-crowd at the Wukesong Arena when playing against China?

That was the question of temperament the 2006 FIBA World Championship silver medalists answered in the affirmative while handing out a 91-77 defeat to the hosts in the Olympic men’s basketball competition on Monday.

The win helped Greece avoid the winners of the other group – Lithuania – but left them playing against defending Olympic gold medalists Argentina, an opponent no less daunting. In the other quarter-finals on Wednedsay, USA play FIBA Oceania champions Australia, China play Lithuania and Spain match wits with Croatia.

Team USA meanwhile closed the engagements in the group with a decisive 106-57 win against Germany. In the other game of the day, 2006 FIBA World Champions Spain took their time to settle down before blowing away Angola’s challenge 98-50.

USA began in a whirlwind manner scoring the first eight points of the game before Sven Schultze sunk a three-pointer for Germany. And immediately after that the Amercians posted a 12-0 run to take a firm grip on the game.

Dwight Howard scored eight of game-high 22 points and Lebron James poured in seven of his 18 points in the first quarter, which the USA led by a whopping 31-12 margin.

The margin only kept increasing before the Americans won the game by a monstrous 49 points – the highest in this Olympics.

“Nobody is going to beat them. No way, it’s just not going to happen,” Germany’s Chris Kaman said.

“Going against Greece and going against Spain, it was really easy to get up for,” James said.

“And we could have easily come in and had one of those games where we make excuses, but we didn’t take a step backwards today and that was good, it was really good,” the Cleveland Cavaliers forward said

Kobe Bryant finished with 13 points while Dwyane Wade and Chris Paul contributed 10 apiece.

“We feel like we’re playing very well right now, but you have to keep in mind it’s single elimination,” Bryant said, about the quarter-final game against Australia.

“You can’t afford any slip-ups.”

Greece left nothing to chance and killed the Chinese hopes very early in the game.

Vasilis Spanoulis poured in 10 of Greece’s first 20 points as they opened a 27-13 lead at the end of the first quarter.

The Panathinaikos guard scored 13 of his 19 points before the teams went into the changing rooms, when the Greeks led by a huge 54-24 advantage.

That proved good enough for the rest of the game.

“I think that we controlled our game,” Greece coach Panagiotis Yannakis said.

“We are trying to play with a clear mind. This will give us a chance to play better against better teams.

“But this crowd here is unbelievable.”

Chinese mainstay Yao Ming scored 16 points, but played just over 18 minutes.

“There was no reason to keep Yao on the court for a long time,” China coach Jonas Kazlauskas explained.

China managed to cut down the deficit to 10 in the fourth quarter, but got no closer.

“At the beginning, the opponent had the full court press and we weren’t accustomed to that,” China’s veteran forward Li Nan said.

“We made a lot of mistakes. Greece played very good defense and our first half was the reason for our defeat.”

Kazlauskas now faces an opponent whom he trained to win the bronze medal eight years ago.

“I don’t think this is going to be a psychological problem,” Kazlauskas brushed aside that talk.

“I love to play against Argentina,” Yannakis said of his team’s quarter-final opponents.

“It gives us a lot of motivation to take on a group of great players. They have great personalities and great talent, too.”

Having lost to the USA woefully in the previous game, Spain had to put behind quite a few ghosts in mind.

They struggled in the first quarter to trail 15-23, but opened up the game after that with their steady display.

Pau Gasol put the World Champions back on the rails – more in terms of confidence – with a game-high 31 points.

“We are in a better position than three days ago,” Spain coach Aito Garcia said.

“Our psychological situation has improved since the defeat to Team USA. We are aware that a game can be won or lost. The most important thing is to be psychologically prepared for a game.”

Up next for Spain is Croatia, whom they lost to in a preliminary round game at last year’s EuroBasket.

“It really doesn’t matter if you finish first, second, third or fourth in the group because everything comes down to one game,” Garcia said.

“We have to accept that this is the case. Now our focus is on Croatia. The majority of the Croatian players have played in Spain. They are a complete team.”

“We have to play as a team. Angola has many great players but the problem is that we cannot play as a team. We made a lot of mistakes and such a large tournament allows no mistakes,” said Angola guard Armando Costa as the FIBA Africa champions left the tournament without a win.

Scores

Greece 91 (Ioannis Bouroussis 19, Vasileios 19, Antonios Fotsis 17) bt China 77 (Yao Ming 16, Wang Zhizhi 14, Wang Shipeng 11, Yi Jianlian 11). Quarterwise Scores: 27-15, 46-24, 69-54.

Spain 98 (Pau Gasol 31, Juan Carlos Navarro 12, Berni Rodriguez 11) bt Angola 50 (Eduardo Mingas 10). Quarterwise Scores: 23-15, 40-30, 71-41.

USA 107 (Dwight Howard 22, Lebron James 18, Kobe Bryant 13) bt Germany 56 (Dirk Nowitzki 14, Jagla Jan-Hendrik 10). Quarterwise Scores: 31-12, 53-29, 83-46.

FIBA