United States 85-97 Greece
We fall to defeat to the Greeks following a CT from them in order to make it into the 2nd group. Tactics worked how I was expecting, although I thought they were going to guess once and maybe even twice. Even then, the game was going clearly in our favor with Hoffman starting out 7-7 with 16 points in the first quarter from his C position. The Greeks saw this and injured him, which sent our offense into a tremendous downward spiral, the GE did not know what to do and started playing players at the C position that were not listed there. Even with this, we stayed in it until the 4th, but it got to be too much and a rough 4th quarter results in the loss. It is very unfortunate as this loss now carries over into this 2nd group, but there was simply no reason for us to put in more effort to try to avoid it. We did our best with tactics but ultimately the injury was the deciding factor.
We conclude the group at 4-1, with our record for the 2nd group at 2-1. Our opponents in order for the next 4 games are Poland, Israel, Spain and Chile. We get no time to dwell on this loss as we have Poland next week. Poland is a world powerhouse, and have a very strong overall roster starting with their bigs starting at 70k and their guards starting at 24k. This is going to be a tough matchup coming off the loss, but we are going to practice hard for a different result next week.
Lets get back on track!
Go USA!