Ukraine completed the EuroBasket 2022 group round with three wins
Head coach of the Ukrainian national team Ainars Bagatskis summed up the performance of the national team in EuroBasket 2022 group stage.
“Although any coach in the world will say “no”, but, probably, I must say that yes, I am satisfied. I don’t think about the place now, there is no difference between second or third place. Yes, the fourth place would not be in our favor, because the Serbs are the favorites and we would like to play with them closer to the final stage. But if we want to win something, leave something behind and show who we are, we have to be able to play against all teams.”
“It is important that we were able to pull out the game against Estonia, in which it was clearly not our day, but the opponent played on courage. We beat Italy, who were playing at home and to whom we lost two weeks ago. We played two very high-quality quarters against Greece, and then we broke down, because we don’t have as many physical resources as the Greeks.”
“Everything in the group round ended well for us, but we need to get rid of the situations in which we play hit-and-run and learn to endure. In basketball, the game always gives you a chance, but you have to know how to use it.”
“I will say that we are still far from our maximum. We have players who are still gaining their condition in these matches. In these matches, we continue to look for stability. I think that during this group round, many people have changed their opinion about our team, because I hear how we are being praised. We have two players from the NBA, two players from Spain, but most of the team has played in Ukraine over the past few years. The Superleague is still not so highly rated in Europe. It is very important for me that the players who play less accept their role in the team. They do a huge amount of work helping each other.”
Recall that Ukraine won three victories in the group and finished in second place, losing the lead to Greece.
In the 1/8 finals of EuroBasket 2022, our team will play against Poland. The match will take place on September 11th. The start of the match, which will be held in Berlin, is 13:00 Kyiv time.
Source: Sportarena
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