2023-06-25 19:24:40
The blue basketball players beat Hungary 82 to 86 to take third place in the Euro this Sunday, June 25.
French basketball players took the bronze medal of Euro-2023 by dominating Hungary, 82 to 68, Sunday June 25 in Ljubljana. Beaten in half by Belgium, France climbed on the European podium for the eighth time in a row, but fell back in the continental hierarchy after five consecutive silver medals.
At the end of the meeting, after a Marseillaise sung by the French supporters present in the room, the Blues were able to wish a happy birthday to Sandrine Gruda, who was celebrating her 36th birthday, with a smile. They thus write one of the longest presences on the podium of a Euro, not far from the nine medals of Czechoslovakia in the 1950s and 1960s, but still at a distance from the 22 rank finals (and 21 coronations) of the hegemonic USSR from 1950 to 1991.
The bronze of the 2023 edition is not as brilliant as the silver of 2013, 2015, 2017, 2019 and 2021 but, as Bleues coach Jean-Aimé Toupane pointed out after the defeat against Belgium in the semi-finals Saturday evening in the Stozice Arena, the French end with a won match, as was the case at the Olympic Games in Tokyo in 2021 against Serbia.
After three minutes of observation dominated by Hungary (7-3), the French women took the measure of their opponents to inflict a 23-1 on them, under the impetus of Alexia Chartereau and Migna Touré, and go well ahead to the score after the first ten minutes (26-8).
Hit in the right shoulder seven days ago in a game without stake against Slovenia in the last match of the first round, Iliana Rupert made her comeback, with a bandage, at the end of the first quarter, succeeding in her first three shots, including one three-pointer. The 21-year-old interior finished the game with 13 points. Les Bleues then managed their lead of around twenty points throughout the game.
The Magyares revived the suspense a little in the last two minutes of the match by returning to nine points (74-65), but Touré, the top French scorer with 20 points, breathed new life into her teammates (80-66 ) with two three-pointers. One year before the Olympic Games at home, French basketball had checked this Women’s Euro as a launching pad towards the supreme deadline.
The management, which has chosen to do without one of its best players, fullback Marine Johannès, taken by its obligations towards its American WNBA franchise, has been able to see the path that remains to be traveled to get a third Olympic podium after 2012 silver in London and 2021 bronze in Tokyo. They can also remember that before the exploits of the Braqueuses in England eleven years ago, the France team had already taken bronze at the Euro in 2011.
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