A Pau Gasol-less Spain fell apart in the final quarter of their final group game as Turkey came back to win 65-57 in the final game of group stage at the 2011 Eurobasket.
Former world champions Spain always looked in control of last year’s world championships runners-up Turkey with the latter’s big man struggling on the offensive end early on while Spain’s prodigious ball movement and limitless shooting range sunk the Turkish.
Juan Carlos Navarro, one of the tournament’s stars so far continued to be deadly from distance. His threat forced Turkey to leave the driving lanes open giving the likes of Ricky Rubio and Rudy Fernandez a free run inside the paint.
But all that firepower fell by the wayside in the second half. Turkey locked down the Spanish offence in the final quarter to an astonishing two points with Omer Asik showing his prodigious skills under the defensive basket.
Ersan Ilyasova and Emir Preldzic came to life, the latter draining 18 points and the former crashing the boards, as Turkey completely overwhelmed the favourites. Marc Gasol top scored for Spain with 12 points.
Elsewhere, Germany’s Hiekko Shaffartzik scored a 3-pointer with six seconds left on the clock to give Germany a dramatic 81-80 win over Latvia, sending them through the second round of the championships.
Dirk Nowitzki had a rare off day scoring just 11 points but the Germans were able to show that they have talent in reserve with Shaffartzik the stand out performer with a double-double.
Rihards Kuksics scored 27 points and looked to be leading his side to shock win when he nervelessly nailed two free throws to give Latvia a four point lead.
Shaffartzik hit a 3-point shot to close the gap to one before Kuksics missed one of his two free throws to open the gap for Germany to steal the game in the final seconds.
With Latvia on course for – eventually pointless considering Latvia’s elimination earlier in the tournament – victory but Shaffartzik’s well worked 3-pointer out of a timeout was enough to secure Germany’s passage.
Great Britain ended Poland’s hopes of progression with an 88-81 win inspired by Joel Freeland’s 14 point final quarter. Freeland’s first good performance came too late for Britain who were eliminated two days ago but his 3-pointer with a minute to go opened up a six point lead and effectively killed Poland’s chances of winning.
