QUALIFIED!

Big,Big,Big...............Big win for GB basketball Last night! What turned out to be one of the most exciting wins for GB Basketball is one of the biggest wins for GB Basketball. Playing in front of a good home crowd that just saw the GB women qualify for next years EuroBasket play with a big win over Germany we were ready to roll. However we could never get total control over our game against Bosnia. Bosnia is a team fighting to stay out of the bottom of our group so it does not move down to a lower division next year. They have a tough team that never gives up and we had out hands full. Every time we made a run and got up eight or nine points they would come back at us hard and make a push to keep the game close. We did tend to shoot ourselves in the foot at times by making unforced errors. A silly foul here a bad shot there and even at times dribbling the ball off our own foot. Only monster games from Loul Deng and Pops Mensu-Bonsu who combined for 70 points and 35 redounds got us over the top in a scary overtime win. Sometimes you never know how you will win a game and this summer we have won games in a variety of ways. Tonight it took a missed free throw and an offensive rebound and foul to give Pops an opportunity to shoot two free throws to tie the game up. We have told the team all summer an opportunity means nothing unless you take advantage of it. And like all summer we did! Pops made his free throws, got us to overtime and we got another hard fought victory in the books. It has never been easy but we just keep fighting and find a way to win. That is a sign of a good team in any sport. With the win we are assured a spot in next years EuroBasket Championships and a chance to qualify for the 2012 Olympics! But first we have one more game to play. If we win we will be 7-1 in our group and get a better spot for next years play. Coach Finch will take it from here:

Sixteen teams from Europe qualify for next summer's EuroBasket Championships in Lithuania. The 16 will be comprised of the 10 European teams currently playing in this summer's World Championship which begin today in Turkey. Five more teams qualify from this summer's Qualifying Round which is what we are competing in and the final team gains entry after winning an additional qualifying tournament made up of the squads that missed out on qualifying this campaign. 10+5+1 adds up to 16 for next summer.

The draw for that tournament will be held in November and just prior to the draw FIBA Europe will rank the teams from 1 to 16 based on this year's performances. Those 16 will be divided into 4 tiers of 4 teams each. The 10 European teams from the World's Championships will be ranked 1 through 10 based on how they performed in Turkey. The top 4 will all be grouped into the top tier (Number 1 seeds), the next four (places 5 through 8) will make up the second tier (number 2 seeds) and the final two (teams 9 and 10 in the ranking) from Turkey along with the top two teams from this year's qualifying tournament (which is what we are competing in) will make up the third tier (number 3 seeds) and the remaining 3 teams plus the winning of next summer's additional qualifying round make up the final tier (bottom seeds).

What were are trying to secure is one of the two open spots in that third tier. The reason for this is because when FIBA Europe makes the draw to form 4 groups of 4 teams they will draw one team from each tier. Being ranked in the higher tier significantly reduces the chance you will draw the tougher teams. We learned this first-hand last summer when the draw gave us Spain, Slovenia and Serbia - quite possibly the toughest group ever to be assembled at the Euros. Spain won gold, Serbia won silver and Slovenia finished fourth last summer in Poland. So, as you can hopefully better see.....there is still a lot to play for tomorrow.

That explanation comes to you from our head coach, Chris Finch who has been through this many times before. Thank you coach. As you can see the higher seed you get the better chances you have of moving on next summer and getting into the 2012 Olympics.