HAMBURG (FIBA U17 World Championship) – The clock read 22:56 when Guy Molloy fell to the ground, breathing hard in disbelief, with his players on the court celebrating Owen Odigie's last second jumper for a 68-66 win over Spain that secured a quarter-finals berth for Australia.
For both teams everything was on the line. Win and advance to the last eight, lose and play in the classification round.
Spain and Australia had a rough start. Neither team was able to establish some kind of rhythm offensively early on, so they focused on defense and the game was tied at 10 at the end of the first quarter.
Australia were not aggressive enough - they had no free-throw attempts in the first half - to really threaten Spain and trailed 34-25 at the break.
The Spaniards though seemed to run low on fuel as the game went on. They seemed to avoid man-to-man contact in the paint, which Australia used to their advantage to rally back.
Daniel Hill nailed a three-pointer to give the Aussies a huge boost and a 64-56 lead with three minutes left to play. Spain came back and got within 64-62 when Javier Medori made a contested scoop shot with 1:33 to go and Australia coach Guy Molloy called a time out.
Jaime Fernandez then tied it at 66 with 18 seconds to go and at the other end, Odigie took two dribbles from the right wing to get into the middle, rose, hung, fired, hit … and celebrated!
Quotes:
Diego Ocampo (Spain head coach): “We played a decent first quarter, but there was too much stress in the final quarter, which was dangerous for us and cost us in the end.”
Guy Molloy (Australia head coach): “Spain had a good game plan and outplayed us for much of the game. But the boys played with heart and rebounded well against an excellent defensive team.”
Alex Ramon Fernandez (Spain guard): “We played good defense in the first half, not thinking about other things. But then we stopped doing the important things that win games.”
Mitchell Norton (Australia guard): “When we stuck to our game plan it worked. We hope we can go on from here.”
FIBA / JB
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