2023-08-27 18:05:56
Frenchman Evan Fournier during the Basketball World Cup group match against Latvia at the Indonesia Arena in Jakarta, August 27, 2023. YASUYOSHI CHIBA / AFP
Huge disappointment for the French men’s basketball team. Beaten by Latvia (88-86), Sunday August 27 in Jakarta, the Olympic vice-champions are eliminated from the World Cup in the first round, when they presented themselves as candidates for the title.
After the debacle suffered in the opening against Canada (95-65), Vincent Collet’s men knew the imperative victory under penalty of seeing their tournament end prematurely. With this second defeat in a row, they can no longer join in one of the first two places in Group H Canada and the Latvians (two wins each).
The French can harbor regrets, who led by 12 points at the start of the last quarter (74-62), but saw the Latvians go ahead for the first time in the match 37 seconds from the end (87 -86), before Sylvain Francisco missed, by three points, the victory shot at the siren.
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The leader was on the ground because France, which appeared on the three current international podiums (3rd of the World Cup-2019, finalist of the Olympic Games-2021 and Euro-2022), was deprived of the holder of the post Nando De Colo. The Asvel player, one of the executives of the Blues in this World Cup – which France also approached with almost all its vital forces – joined the locker room five minutes from the end after a second unsportsmanlike foul , synonymous with disqualification. He had to leave his partners for a gesture of humor when he benefited from a foul.
“We cracked mentally, we cracked physically”
“Our team is beautiful and being beautiful is good, but going out on the pitch and getting your hands dirty is better,” reacted pivot Rudy Gobert. “When hot, it’s a big disappointment. We fell mentally, we fell physically, we weren’t together.declared, for his part, Nicolas Batum at the microphone of BeIN at the end of the meeting, visibly very moved for his last World Cup.
Read the portrait (2019): Nicolas Batum, new conductor of the Blues
Vincent Collet’s men also lost far too many balls (20) against a Latvian selection deprived of its star Kristaps Porzingis and who was playing in the first World Cup in its history. Under the cheers of her large colony of supporters, she qualified for the second round.
#Blues #eliminated