Georgian U20 Team Lost Game Against Sweden
Georgian U20 team had to pay high price for Luka Liklikadze’s injury. Of course, its hard to claim, that our team could certainly defeat tall and well balanced Swedish team with main point guard, but chances would be higher. Georgians fought and played on the same level with Scandinavians. If not problems in 3rd period, we would have real chance to win the game.
Team coached by Milos Gligorijevic, after defeating Austria, faced Sweden, one of the favorites of the tournament and lost by 67:77. Our team played strong at the beginning and was winning 10:0 with points scored by Levan Kvartskhava, Vladimer Tavakarashvili and Mate Kapanadze, but afterward Swedish team start controlling the game and was already winning 28:25 by the end of the first period.
The Georgian team showed a fighting character and countered Swedish attacks correct, defensive tactics. One thing is that, it was tough to play against tall players of the Scandinavians – Forsling Sebastian and Bo Klintman, who scored 28 points and 24 rebounds, which is quite good result in a low-scoring match.
Point-by-point game continued until the end of the first half. Georgian team had chance to take the lead before the brake, but Kvartskhava missed both free throws and the Scandinavians won 35:34. The fate of the match was actually decided in the third period. The Swedes scored 15 points while Georgians collected 2 and took the control of the game.
Swedish Team won 3rd period with 10 points, and this advantage was kept by the end of the game. Georgians won last 10 minutes of the game by 20:19, but it was not enough and consequently our team experienced its first loss.
Vladimer Tavakarashvili with 19 points and 4 steals had the best result in our team. 11 point and 7 rebounds were scored by Vladimer Salaridze. Levan Kvartskhava contributed 9 points and Nikoloz Gaprindashvili collected 8 points.
Swedish team with 3 wins is the leader of our group, north Macedonia comes seconds with 2 wins and 1 loss. To qualify to next round Georgians should win both remaining games against-North Macedonia and Kosovo
18 of July is Championship dayoff and games in “Tbilisi Arena” and “Olympic Palace” will be resumed after Tuesday.
