The Spain of miracles will not miss the Eurobasket event. Scariolo’s team, again led by Santi Yusta (25 points), learned from its mistakes and achieved, again against Slovakia, its second consecutive victory in the qualifying group. It is not much, but it is enough to catch a ticket that has not escaped the team since 1959. The minimum required.
Spain had recently had the bad experience of Bratislava and came out willing not to suffer a similar agony. And it was Yusta – the hero of that game, with that miraculous triple with 0.4 seconds left – who assumed offensive command. Even with high morale after that epic moment, the Basket Zaragoza forward quickly found his first points in quick transitions and good individual actions. Slovakia maintained its momentum thanks to Brodziansky, who else. The UCAM Murcia center, who played everything last Friday, was once again the axis around which his teammates revolved. Thanks to him, his offensive rebounds and his baskets, Spain was unable to take advantage of a maximum advantage of nine points and finished that first quarter with a slim advantage (22-18).
Alocén, Josep Puerto – a good debut for him – and Pradilla, this one with two consecutive actions, a hook over Brodziansky and a basket after a reverse, collaborated so that Spain’s advantage was consolidated above ten points.
Slovakia began to feel the blows and accumulate errors in a very disorganized attack. Spain knew that it had to apply its defense and continued to increase its lead with free throws and a devastating triple by Puerto that served to close the quarter with a resounding run of 17-4. At halftime there was already a 15-point margin (47-32).
Until then, the match was a carbon copy of Bratislava, especially on the scoreboard. And the danger was the same again. Slovakia began the third round with a 7-0 run and ended up being just two points behind after two consecutive triples by David Abrham. The bleeding was stopped by Puerto with another shot from the perimeter, and Yusta restored peace to the Spanish bench with a 2+1.
This time the reaction was immediate and also served to give Spain its best minutes to the Orense fans. Fran Guerra began to shine in the painting and Yusta continued in that spectacular version that he has shown throughout the entire concentration. Between them they cooked up the best play of the game: a spectacular alley-oop that once again put Spain with a double-digit lead.
In the last quarter the Slovaks arrived with little desire to give their all, but, even so, Yusta had to appear one last time so that the end was calm and the champion began to dream of the option of revalidating his crown next year .
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