Although in the end they once again trembled, the Spaniards won the bronze medal at the EuroBasket.At 93:85, the Russians were defeated in the match for third place.
The Spaniards already knew that defending their title would not work since the clear bankruptcy against Slovenia in the semi-finals, but the Iberians did not want to leave Istanbul without precious metal.As a result, they opened the match motivated and dominated from the start, with 45:28 in front at break time.
But of course, the Sbornaja didn’t give up so quickly.Thanks to their again good shooting (14/31 3FG) they came in the third round yet again into striking distance and stalked themselves to 11 points, after a threesome of Evgeny Baburin it was at the beginning of the fourth quarter even only 8 points.
The Spaniards didn’t get really nervous, Ricky Rubio and Pau Gasol were almost immediately back to 12 points ahead.But then Rubio had to face his second unsportsmanlike foul of the match and had to leave the arena about five minutes before the end.Now all of a sudden, the fire came in – Dmitry Kulagin set the next threesome, suddenly it was 76:71 from the point of view of the Spaniards.Sergio Scariolo was furious and urged his team to concentrate more on the game in the break.
It helped only conditionally.The Russians believed in themselves again and didn’t throw next to them any more, in short it was only 2 points after Spain had already been leading 18.But now the enormous cleverness of the Spaniards, namely the Gasol-Hermanos, was evident, which provided important points.A Pau-Dunk about 70 seconds before the end put to 8 points advantage, the game was decided, because the Russians missed again some threesomes.
The top scorers on the Spanish side were both Gasols, Pau (26 points, 10 rebounds) and Marc (25 points) were once again in a class of their own.Sergio Rodriguez also showed a strong performance with 14 points and 9 assists.As usual Alexey Shved was the best scorer of the Russians with 18 points, but interestingly he was hardly on the court during his team’s comeback.Timofey Mozgov scored 14 points.