“Croatia is an interesting opponent,” says head coach Tuovi.
Basketball Finland’s national team will face Croatia in Sunday’s European Championship quarter-final, says the Basketball Association. Susijengi, who arrived in Berlin on Thursday evening, finished second in Prague’s D group and Croatia third in Milan’s C group.
“Croatia is an interesting opponent not only because we have recently played two matches against them in the World Cup qualifiers, but also because they have strengthened themselves after the qualifiers with three high-level players, i.e. With Krunoslav Simon, With Jaleen Smith and With Dario Saric“, Susijeng’s head coach Lassi Tuovi commented in the announcement.
Croatia beat Great Britain 86–65, Estonia 73–70 and Ukraine 90–85 in their opening group, but lost to Greece 85–89 and Italy 76–81.
from Croatia we saw quite a bit of tactics in Thursday’s match against Ukraine. Croatia had a seven-point lead in the closing seconds when its NBA star Bojan Bogdanović was at the free throw line. An eight-point win would have given Croatia second place and the third place in Group C.
Bogdanović intentionally missed his free throw, which is why Croatia won by only five points. Thus, Croatia remains in group three and will face Finland.
Finland’s head coach Tuovi did not want to comment on Croatia’s performance after the victory over Holland.
“It’s fresh in my mind that in mid-summer Croatia attacked a lot through inside play, and we have to find solutions for that, and the aim is to let them run like our other opponents. However, the most important thing is to focus on what you are doing and get your game rolling. Everyone has been waiting for us to play these games,” the head coach continued.
Sunday’s match will be played in the afternoon at 14:45 local time at Berlin’s Mercedes-Benz Arena, i.e. 15:45 Finnish time. The winner of the match will face the winner of the Spain-Lithuania quarter-final match in the quarter-finals.
In the other matches of the quarterfinals, Germany will face Montenegro, Greece the Czech Republic, Spain Lithuania, Slovenia Belgium, Ukraine Poland, Turkey France and Serbia Italy.
#Basketball #Susigengi #face #Croatia #quarterfinals #missed #purpose #order #Finland #opponent
