Day four of group D, the picture is getting clearer

Day four of group D was a day of two close games, which led us to two team advancing to the next round, one got eliminated one polish team who, despite losing, have their fate in their hands.

The first game between France and Poland was open by a French blitz led by the super athletic Boris Dallo and the active Axel Bottelie, but the Polish team didn’t panic, and showed they can run aswell.

It’s a very fundamentally sound Polish team, with no big stars but they run the floor very well.

They led tourgh most of the second half, but 4^th quarter run by Dallo and Luwawu was too much for them to handle.

Kacper Borowski had a very good game, being very active on both ends of the court. He has great athletic ability and nice size for a European forward standing about 2.05, and despite being pretty thin, he (with Witilinsky) did excellent job containing the massive Jaiteh.

The biggest disappointment in this group so far to me is Damian Jeszke, who was the MVP of the last u18 Div B.

Standing slightly under 2.00, he plays full time PF for the Polish team, he shows good court awareness in most of the games, but two very irresponsible fouls he made has pretty much led to the French comeback.

He has good touch but should develop a better finishing technique in the paint, as he tried twice to finish with jumpshot from 2 meters after a dish which was way, way off.

He has pretty poor mechanics on his shot, shooting from a very low release point (under his chin!), but shows very good touch on it.

The second game was a wrestle fight, with not much basketball being played.

Russia started the game much better but the Israeli match up zone and switch on everything defense was very efficient as the game continue.

Israel 4 forward line up could switch on everything, and the Russian guards could not fined a way past them.

Unless a late spark by Mikahil Kulagin, the Russian would have scored only 20 pts in the second half.

Today starts with a meaningless game between Israel and Bulgaria, and then Russia and Poland will match up for the most important game for both teams – the one who wins goes to the final 12, the loser will fight against the pleasure of playing Div B next year.