Italy 112 - 96 Belgium
a logic loss against one of the great BB Nt teams. They nearly always are in contension for the world cup, so no shame here. I'm pretty impressed that we managed to keep the score so close. With some key players out of shape, this is a pretty good result.
Romania 129 - 111 Suomi
I wasn't expecting Romania to actually pull it off even if they used their CT against Suomi. And i especially didn't expect Suomi to play TIE! But then again, 3 losses would put them out of contension for the second spot. But thanks to this, the chances of Belgium making the next round have greatly improved! But more about that later on. One thing is sure: Suomi have been knocked out of contension for the 2nd spot, which is a great relief for Belgium. Cause Suomi in CT against Italy in TIE, they could win that game. had they won tonite, then we would have been forced to go all out against Romania and be sure to win our next game to go to the next round. And you got to feel for Suomi. They lose a couple of Bigs ( 300K ones!) so they were weakened. And once again, playing 2-3 is a real risk, as is shown in this game. If suomi had played Man to man, they probably would have won this game, despite the Ct from Romania...
Netherlands 123 - 95 Cyprus
a logical defeat for Cyprus. Netherlands get a win and will try and salvage whatever ranking they can on the NT rankings list to avoid a super heavy pool in 2 seasons from now. for the second season in a row, things didn't turn out in their favor. Sometimes you got to be lucky, and they just have had bad luck so far... But BB usually is a fair game, so some day, the sun will shine again for them (after this dreadfull period of rain)! And i'd hate to face them then, cause they really do have a good team ( you can't defeat Suomi on equal power if you don't have some luck and a pretty good team. And the Netherlands have got a better team than us in general. We just got a few exceptional players that can cause some mismatches that works very much in our favor). I hope that they'll win their last game too ( just because they are our northern neighbours. They can be really enjoyable when they want to, and i've often seen alot of humor in their chat during the games).
norway 108 - 91 Azerbejan
No surprise here. Altho the Azerbejan coach wasted some enthousiasme. not sure why he did so, considering that next week he's got a game against Cyprus which will decide who ends last in this pool...
As for next NT game:
We know that:
1st place (and the first ticket) will be going to Italy. Nobody can jump over them, not even on goal average (unless they lose by 50 points to Suomi and we were to win by 50 points of Romania... which isn't going to happen)
in contension for the second place are Belgium and Romania. If Belgium doesn't lose by more than 18 points from Romania, then Belgium will go on to the next round. Futhermore, Romania has used up alot of their enthousiasme, where as ours is still at our highest possible lvl. This means that Belgium has a great advantage against Romania. However, Romania doesn't have anything to lose anymore, so they will play CT against Belgium. But let's to talk about losing. Belgium will be playing to win the game. No need to take any unnecessairy risks when qualification for the next round is within our grasp.
Netherlands, Suomi, Norway, Azerbejan and Cyprus are out of contension for the second spot that would qualify the team to move onto the european championship and thus will play for the best possible rankings in their last games.
On to next week, and let us hope that we will emerge victorious, so that we can move onto the next round with a solid record!
Revo