OLYW - Croatia register historic win, look ahead to Turkey

LONDON (Olympics) - Day 4 at the Olympic Basketball Tournament for Women tipped off with Angola taking on Croatia, two teams that have a few things in common.

Both teams were making their Olympic debut and, after each lost their first three Group A games, they were still chasing that elusive first win.
 
On this day, Croatia were the better team, winning 75-56 to make Croatian Basketball history.

"This is an excellent feeling because this is the first game we win at the Olympics," said Croatia captain Sandra Mandir, who contributed 18 points, five rebounds and five assists to the winning cause.

"Now our confidence level goes up so we can give our best against Turkey. We must give everything to win that game because Turkey are an excellent team."

The result saw Stipe Bralic's girls improve to 1-3 and gives them an outside shot at reaching the Quarter-Finals. They need to beat the Turks and have other results go in their favour too.

"It's the first win for Croatia Women's Basketball at the Olympics and I think we played very well," the coach said.

"We had energy in this game, especially on defense and in rebounding.

"I'm happy because we had 51 rebounds in this game. It's different to the last game (against Czech Republic) when they had 25 more rebounds than us."

Ana Lelas led all scorers with 23 points and was encouraged by her team's ability to finally put together one good game of basketball.

"It's a great result for Croatia. We finally found our game. We played well. Angola did their job, but we were better," she said.

"I'm glad that the girls that came off the bench brought a lot of energy. We got a lot of good fastbreaks."

Much like Mandir, Lelas was quick to turn her attention to Saturday's game against Europeans silver medalists Turkey.

"The next game is going to be a lot harder. 

"I think we still have to play better to reach the Quarter-Finals. I believe we can do something against Turkey even though they are a very good team."

Mandir pointed to the fact that Croatia have improved with each game in London and is confident her team still has a lot more to offer.

"I think we have more to show to everybody," she warned.

"We didn't play well early in the tournament. Against China, we played very bad defense and against Czech Republic we played excellent in the beginning but then we fell behind in the second half.

"Beating Angola is a good feeling. It gives us confidence that we can do better than we have done up until now."

The defeat for Angola dropped them to 0-4 and means they are the first team eliminated from the tournament.

Anibal Moreira's charges will take on Czech Republic in their last game on Saturday.

FIBA