TBILISI (Georgia) - Spain managed to bounce back after their unexpected loss to Belgium and demonstrated quality basketball in a 82-65 win over Montenegro in Group A, moving to 3-1 and booking a spot to the Final Phase in Berlin.

Montenegro never fully waived the white flag with their main players clocking a decent amount of minutes. However, Spain played a consistent game and received solid efforts from Dario Brizuela, Jaime Pradilla, Lorenzo Brown and Willy Hernangomez, among others.

 
Turning point: Things were already rough for Montenegro, yet they climbed back to a 13-point deficit before Sergio Scariolo asked for a timeout. Spain then went on a 11-2 run to close out the first half up 53-31.

TCL Player of the Game: Willy Hernangomez scored 14 points and grabbed 13 rebounds, out of which 7 were on the offensive glass. 

 
Stats don't lie: Spain made 9 of its first 15 three-pointers, with Montenegro at 2-for-15 in the meantime. That difference never changed much as La Familia finished the game with 11 made shots from long range, but their opponents converted only 23 percent of such looks.

Bottom line: Spain's win allows both them and Turkey qualify for Round of 16. Montenegro can start preparing for their most important game of FIBA EuroBasket 2022 as they will need a win against the hosts Georgia in front of a rocking Tbilisi Arena crowd.

They said:

"I know I'm extremely demanding because the effort, which I envision for our team to compete at the top level is terrific. At the same time we proved that we can do that for a good stretch of minutes. If we don't do it like in the last 15 minutes tonight, we are a very regular team." - Spain coach Sergio Scariolo

"We started the game right - with effort and energy. We tried to play as in the plan that coaches gave us before the game, and had 25 good minutes. But we cannot relax. If we want to win and do something, we have to play 40 minutes of really good basketball." - Willy Hernangomez, Spain

"We played maybe the worst first half in the last year. Without defense and discipline on offense. The whole first half was very bad. In the second half we tried to do something, played better defense, but Spain is a very good team." - Montenegro coach Bosko Radovic

"We definitely want to forget the game as early as possible. We lost the game in the first five minutes. They dominated us in every possible way - with rebounds, by playing fast. We allowed them to do whatever they wanted on offense. After they scored so easily so many times our morale went down and it was tough to organize on offense." - Vladimir Mihailovic, Montenegro

 
FIBA