Impressive defensively, the French team completely extinguished Poland in the semi-finals of EuroBasket. A masterclass that comes at the best of times before going to fight for the gold medal this Sunday (from 8:30 p.m.).
After surviving Turkey and Italy, a game against Poland seemed like a pretty good deal for the Blues. Only here, we know a little about the song in France. We tear ourselves up to beat a good team and then we relax against an opponent supposedly easy to take. The classic trap what. Fortunately, our tricolors did not want to laugh at the end of the afternoon. Suffocating from the start, the French defense literally took a Polish team by the throat, which clearly fell on a bone. In the wake of an imperial Rudy Gobert, impassive, pillar of the temple and author of several monstrous counterattacks, the Blues double-locked and threw away the key, leaving Mateusz Ponitka and his teammates without the slightest solution. The Poles had scored 58 points in the first half against Slovenia in the previous round, they were limited to… 18 points today. Little info stats that comes to us from BasketNews, the last team to score so few points at half-time in a EuroBasket semi-final was Hungary in 1946! They had scored… 12 points.
The last team to have scored fewer than 20 points in the first half of a #EuroBasket semi-final since ???????? Poland was ???????? Hungary in 1946 against Czechoslovakia with 12 points ????
— BasketNews (@BasketNews_com) September 16, 2022
Symbol of this offensive inefficiency: the two leaders of the team, Mateusz Ponitka and AJ Slaughter, totally muzzled and who accumulate 16 points at 6/19 to shoot. With compliments from Terry Tarpey, Andrew Albicy and Timothé Luwawu-Cabarrot. Impossible in these conditions to expect much and Poland therefore finished for the first time in the tournament under 60 points. The culprit, this French team which has not given up and which is putting itself in the best conditions before its final on Sunday evening. Spaniards and Germans who clash earlier are warned, it will be necessary to take out the kevlar to go and try to score against this tricolor wall. While the offensive limits of the tricolors have been pointed out several times during the preparation and the group stage, it is perhaps his iron defense that will offer the tournament to France. It now remains to be seen whether it is the attacks of Dennis Schröder or those of Willy Hernangomez that will have to be repelled.
L‘Team France activated the fortress mode and Poland ate an ugly wall when it came to rubbing shoulders with it. With a performance of this quality this Sunday, the Blues can believe in gold.
Source texte : BasketNews