Feel free to discuss the World Championships here! Official site 2010 FIBA World Championship Turkey - powered by fiba.com Schedule FIBA.com - 2010 FIBA World Championship Schedule Preview Hoops Addict » FIBA World Championships Preview
To get things started, Serbia and Greece played a warm-up match today which ended in a brawl and the game being abandoned. Bench-clearing brawl ends Acropolis tournament - NBA - Yahoo! Sports It also witnessed the weakest coward act since Melo's punch at the Garden by none other than Thunder centre Nenad Krstic who threw a chair at an unsuspecting opponent! Hilarity ensued... YouTube - Greece-Serbia fight Basketball 19/8/2010 Acropolis Tournament
Billups will deliver the championship. Team looks fast, with no real 5. Watch the video...It was all Greek to me.
I can see how this happened. [strike]Serbian players tend to play the game with a lot of passion.[/strike]
Krstic gets busted. Now that was a brawl: Nenad Krstic has been released from prison - ProBasketballTalk - Basketball - NBC Sports
USA 2-0, facing Brazil who are also undefeated Durant, Love send US to 2-0 start at worlds - NBA - Yahoo! Sports I wonder if anyone has ever used the word "grind game" for a game that was won by a 22 point differential. Recap from Brazil's last game: Brazil stays unbeaten at worlds, faces US next - NBA - Yahoo! Sports
FIBA 2010 Germany (1-1) playing the Aussies (1-1) now and they are down 31-12 in the second quarter. No Nowitzki no juice for the Deutsche it seems. The hosts Turkey will play Greece tomorrow. Both teams undefeated so far. Their last international game was a nail-biter that went to overtime when the Turks tied it with a last second set-play. Greeks were victorious in the end. This should be a good one. Espana lost to France, but beat New Zealand without too much difficulty. The game against Lithuania (2-0) will be a tough test for them. Lithuanians play the French after that game. Group D is a tough one with either one of three teams capable of finishing on top.
Groups BTW BTW, for those who don't feel like browsing the FIBA pages, here's who's in each group. The teams are listed per their record as of 10:00AM PST 8/30. I also listed their FIBA world ranking. GROUP A Serbia (2-1) - 5th Argentina (2-0) - 1st Australia (1-1) - 11th Germany (1-1) - 7th Jordan (0-3) - 38th Angola (1-1) - 12th GROUP B Slovenia (2-1) - 20th USA (2-0) - 2nd Brazil (2-0) - 14th Croatia (1-2) - 15th (tied with France) Iran (0-2) - 21st Tunisia (0-2) - 43rd GROUP C Turkey (2-0) - 18th Greece (2-0) - 4th China (1-1) - 9th Russia (1-1) - 17th Puerto Rico (0-2) - 10th Ivory Coast (0-2) - 41st GROUP D France (2-0) - 15th (tied with Croatia) Lithuania (2-0) - 6th Spain (1-1) - 3rd Lebanon (1-1) - 24th Canada (0-2) - 19th New Zealand (0-2) - 13th The preliminary round is league style, where each team plays each other once. You get 2 points for a win and 1 point for a loss (why I have no idea). Anyways, the points determine the seeding, and then head-to-head comparisons determine the order. Top 4 teams from each group advance to second round. Second round is a single game knockout stage. The teams are matched like so: A1 vs B4 D2 vs C3 C1 vs D4 B2 vs A3 B1 vs A4 C2 vs D3 D1 vs C4 A2 vs B3 That begins the bracket. Winner of the first game above plays the winner of second game above in the quarter finals etc. It's hard to visualize the bracket in a text form so, for the full bracket go here: FIBA.com - 2010 FIBA World Championship Brackets Detailed group standings are at: FIBA.com - 2010 FIBA World Championship Group standing
USA dodges a bullet with a 2 pt victory over the Brasilia..70-68..looks like they need a little more discipline when it comes to taking shots. Spurs have a good one Tiaggo Splitter if he can get his passport and visa issues resolved by training camp. Good game today
Yep, that was a close one. US survives test, holds on to edge Brazil 70-68 - NBA - Yahoo! Sports Sounds like we need to be better focused defensively.
Group A With a win over Angola today, Argentina pretty much have guaranteed to top Group A. They play Jordan next which is quite winnable, and then finish up with a tough game against Serbia, who would be fighting for seeding. Serbians have two tough games left. Australia and Argentina. They'll have to fight hard to get the #2 seed. Aussies play Serbia and then have a relatively easy game against Angola. The remaining two games the Germans have are against Angola and Jordan. Even though they're young, the Germans will probably come through in those games. Neither Angola nor Jordan have a realistic chance to advance. I suspect the top four for this group will be: 1. Argentina 2. Australia 3. Serbia 4. Germany *The* game to watch: Serbia vs. Australia (9/1 9:30AM EST on ESPN)
I dunno about that. Germany only lost to Argentina by 4 and beat Serbia by 1. They were playing pretty well until they faced the speed of the Aussies! Argentina is missing a few guys. Delfino and Scola are the driving force for them this tourney. Living up to the number 1 rank may be difficult. This is probably the most wide-open tournament (olympics or championships) for a long, long time. Any one of 6 or more teams can win it I think. Australia got lucky against Jordan in round 1 but have had 2 solid games since then. If only we had Bogut, we'd have a real shot at it. Aleks Maric was in the All-Euroleague first team last season. We will live or die by the jumpshot, but in International ball this is usually the case for most teams. Are you in Turkey Walter? Going to any games? I was there a couple of years ago - it's a nice country to travel in and plenty of interesting and historical places to visit. I actually met an old man whose family is Turkish living in Australia from my home town (which is only 3,000 people!)
Group B Well, with today's win against Brazil, USA pretty much will come out of the group on top. The remaining two games are against the two weakest teams in the group, so it'll be quite the surprise if the USA doesn't compile a 5-0 record. Brazil is currently #2 seed, but they play Slovenia and then Croatia. Wow. They've got their work cut out for them. Slovenians will play Brazil and close out the group stage against Iran. They should win against Iran, but Brazil is going to be tough. Croatians play Tunisia and then conclude their group stage against Brazil. Tunisia is gone, and Iran's hopes to sneak in to the next round rest on a victory against Slovenia. That's a tall order though, judging by their performances against Brazil and Croatia. I suspect the top four for this group will be: 1. USA 2. Slovenia 3. Brazil 4. Croatia *The* games to watch: Brazil vs Slovenia (9/1 2:30pm EST on ESPN) Brazil vs Croatia (9/2 2:30pm EST on ESPN)
No, but I wish I was. I was there in June and the place was already buzzing with excitement. Basketball is huge over there and it is getting bigger and bigger every year. Thanks. It is a fun place to visit. Oh man, what a coincidence with that old man. That's just proof that the world is such a small place. I have a friend who went to college in Brisbane. He almost never came back because he loved it there so much.
Turkey wins against Greece by 11pt margin, going 3-0 in the group. They should be able to come out of the group as the top team. Very exciting game. The first half was head-to-head. The Turks pulled away in the 3rd, up by 20pts at some point but the Greeks had a furious rally in the 4th. The Turks won despite a horrible showing by Hedo. Bucks' forward Ilyasova had a fantastic game. Bulls also seemed to have found a great bench center/pf in Asik. He's extremely athletic and seems to have good court awareness. He needs to bulk up to play against NBA big men, but he seems to be able to make up for his lack of size with smart play and timing. He held his own against the Greek bulldozer/EuroShaq Schortsinidis. GO TURKEY!
Spain loses to Lithuania today to go down 1-2. It's not looking good for the Spaniards. They play their last two games against Lebanon and Canada, so technically they should be able to advance to the next round with a 3-2 record, but the pressure is on for the defending champs. Depending on the final seeding, if they advance, they might be facing Greece in the next round for a rematch of the title game in 2006.
