• But let’s start with the surprise of the day. Greek Media outlets announce the possibility of a transfer of Nikos Pappas to Spain. According to these rumors, his agents paid his buyout at Panellinios to make him a free-agent on the market. And these same sources report that the Spanish ACB team of Bilbao wants to sign him. We will keep you updated about this story. (found on TheHoop)
• Before coming to the important stuff, just check out this video clip of the Georgian and Israeli U20 players after the game on Sunday where Israel managed to beat Georgia and advance to the next round.
• Greece is the 2008 U18 European Champion after they beat Lithuania in a tight final 57-50. Another big game by Kostas Sloukas helped them to win over Lithuania. Despite having lost their versatile forward Vladimir Jankovic with a broken foot, the team stepped up and improved during the whole tournament. Belgium and Estonia will move to division B.
• The All-Tournament team of the U18 Division A is the following:
  PG-Kostas Sloukas
  SG-Nikos Pappas
  SF-Mario Delas
  PF-Donatas Motiejunas (MVP)
  C-Enes Kanter
• Slovenia hammered everybody in Division B of the U18 European Championships and will promote together with the Czech Republic to Division. The final has been won by Slovenia 68-60 against the Czechs.
• The All-Tournament team of the U18 Division B is the following:
  PG-Mirza Sarajlija
  SG-Tomas Satoransky
  SF-Marko Vranjkovic
  PF-Jakub Wojciechowsky
  C-Jan Vesely
• In the U20 European Championship of Division A, 4 teams go with 2 wins and zero losses to the Qualifying round which starts tomorrow. Lithuania, Italy, France and a surprising Montenegro team have now good possibilities to advance to the semis. The story about Montenegro is of course that the team has only lost 1 official game in its history so far, a surprising loss against Austria in last year’s B Division campaign. Greece, Georgia, Bulgaria and Slovenia will fight for the two spots to remain in Division A though.

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Division A

• Let’s start with the teams that have to play for staying in Division A. While Belgium and Estonia are in this group without any surprise, Germany and Bulgaria were not awaited here by all of the observers. Belgium did a correct job and with what they showed against Greece, they may come up with a surprise in this classification round and beat some of the teams. Estonia, without their injured top prospect Siim-Sander Vene had no chances to qualify for the Top 12 and will struggle badly to stay in the division. But the teams of Germany and Bulgaria had some quality talent on their roster and their elimination at this stage may be considered as a surprise. While the loss of both SFs for Kay Blümel’s team before the tournament was probably a bigger loss than expected, the Bulgarians lost their European Championship in the surprising defeat against Latvia.
• In the Qualifying round for the semi-finals, the teams that have the best cards right now are France, Croatia, Greece and Lithuania. All of them have now 2 wins and zero losses. Greece has to play Lithuania, Serbia and Italy which is quite a heavier schedule than they had in the group phase. Additionally, the injury of Vladimir Jankovic will hurt the team setup for the next games as so far, the Greek bench was not that much used besides Mantzaris and Papanikolaou. Lithuania, that beat Serbia at the total surprise of everybody has now the great chance to qualify for the semis. They will play against Greece, Spain and Israel and two wins should be enough to qualify. On the other side of the table, France will have to play against Croatia, Turkey and Latvia. The limited inside play of the French team may hurt them as both Croatia and Turkey have dominating inside guys. For the Croats, playing Russia, France and Ukraine will be a tough schedule but the team showed so far that they are semi-final material.
• The top scorers of the tournament so far are the inside guys Enes Kanter and Marios Delas. The 16 year old Turk averaged so far 24.3ppg and 10.3rpg while the more versatile Croatian forward comes up with 21.3ppg, 9,0rpg and 2.7apg.

Division B

• In Division B, we have only three undefeated left, the two favorites Poland and Slovenia and more surprisingly Austria. And these Austrians are already sure to play for the Top8 as Montenegro came up with a surprising loss tonight against the Netherlands. So we will see tomorrow the top game of Group A between Austria and the Czech Republic.
• Group B has Slovenia above all, as the team around Dino Muric had no problems to beat their opponents by huge margins. Switzerland maybe lost their chances to qualify for the Top8 by getting beat by Sweden today. The Nordic team has their last game tomorrow against the still winless Irish guys and with a win, they will go for the Qualification round for moving up to Division A.
• Group C has its dominators in the Polish team that has a great bunch of talent on its roster. Only England gave them some trouble so far and Poland will have their last game tomorrow against the surprising Portuguese team. The team around the scoring Joao Soares is already qualified for the Top8 as they have beaten Romania which is the only team that still can come up with the same record as Portugal after the bad loss of England tonight against Belarus.
• Group D is probably the one with the most surprise as the highly talented Georgian team is not sure yet to move to the next round. They absolutely need a win tomorrow against Finland in order to move to the next round. Denmark has already finished their group phase and surprisingly lost against Hungary in a game that could have secured them a Top8 spot. Now they have to hope on a Georgia loss in order to continue their dream of moving up.
• The top scorer so far in the competition is the 1991 born Slovakian guard Richard Grznár with 23.3ppg and shooting an incredible 13/19 from behind the arc.

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Division A

• While Spain struggled one half to beat Belgium, the Greek team continued their arrogant play. After a superb start into the game and leading by around 20 points, they stopped to play and let Israel come back in the game. The Israeli even went ahead in the third quarter, but this was the alarm signal for Kosta Sloukas and his mates. They started a late rush to win the game with 22 points. While Nikos Pappas is still going very slow, it’s Kosta Sloukas who takes over the leader role of the team with his 23pts and 6asts. Vladimir Jankovic showed also his versatility and Zisis Sarikopoulos continues to score on his left handed hook shots.
• Serbia had no problem to win against Estonia while Lithuania beat Italy in a thriller. For the Italians, Nicolo Melli seems to start his European Championship a bit slower but he came up with 13pts yesterday. For his team, it looks like Pasquale Paolisso is the man that takes the responsibility while David Cournooh is still the main option from outside. For the Lithuanians, the 1991 born guard Augustas Peciukevicius excels with his aggressive play that brings him to the line often and puts the opponents under pressure. Tautvydas Slezas is doing his job in the middle with 22pts and 14rebs.
• Germany struggled again with the turnovers against Russia and have to play a Final against Ukraine today in order to advance to the next round. A Ukrainian team that had no chance against France that finally opened their defense box and allowed only 50 points. Chrislain Cairo improves and comes up with 12 and 9 while Alexis Tanghe led all scorers with 15 and 8.
• Another final will be played in the last group between Latvia and Bulgaria, both team have no wins so far. It was Toni Prostran that managed to hold of the Bulgarians in the final minutes with 4 late points to seal the deal. Turkey also needed the final seconds to win against Latvia to remain undefeated. Enes Kanter was once again dominant in the middle where nobody could stop him.

Division B

• The favorites Czech Republic and Slovenia had no problems to win their openers against the Netherlands and Sweden. Also Poland continued their winning streak and are now 2-0 after they defeated Belarus easily.
• The division also has already some surprises with the two Alpine countries Austria and Switzerland still being undefeated. Austria held off Montenegro and increased its chances to move to the Qualifying round while the Swiss also beat a former Yugoslavian country with Bosnia-Herzegovina.

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Division A

• Croatia did not have too much problems to beat a Latvian team that won’t probably repeat their Bronze medal act from last year. Mario Delas was everywhere for the Croats with 24pts, 9rebs and 3asts.
• Germany beat France in a very important game already as this group looked pretty equal. The M&Ms were on fire with Maurice Stuckey scoring 20pts in 23 minutes and Maik Zirbes going for a double-double with 22pts and 11trebs.
• In the game of the night, Greece overcame Spain in a closer game than everyone thought in the beginning. The Greeks started quickly despite a calm game of Nikos Pappas. They increased their lead and used their inside players Leonidas Kaselakis and Zisis Sarikopoulos very well against a small Spanish team. In the 2nd half, when Spain was switching to a zone, the could come back behind some good defensive efforts and a few nice plays by Alejandro Hernandez. However, it was Vladimir Jankovic and Konstantinos Papanikolaou who sealed the game in the game and a last second three pointer from mid-court by the Spanish guard could not change the result.
• Serbia, who misses all their players of Crvena Zvezda because of injury, struggled badly in their opener of the tournament and lost 83-68 against a Lithuanian team that was lead by Tautvydas Slezas and his 16pts, 13rbs, 3asts and 2blks. For Serbia, it was especially Bojan Subotic who was far away from his normal level with 2/10 shooting and 0/3 FTs.
• Bulgaria had nearly the comeback of the day after trailing by 17 in the fourth quarter. But it was not enough against the 24pts and 9rebs of Enes Kanter for the Turkish team.
• ERT World Sat broadcasts the game of the Greek U18 team. You can follow the Live Stream here from tomorrow’s game Greece-Israel starting at 18h00 CET.

Division B

• Poland had a lot of trouble to win against a English team without Ryan Richards who is not with the team because of slight injuries. Behind the 30pts of 1991 born guard Sebastian Szymanski, the Polish team won despite having their top prospect Jakub Wojciechowski fouled out in just 16 minutes. England coach Andre Alleyne told me after the game that he wasn’t happy in the way we played defense in the first half. We picked it up in the second and if we transfer that to the Portugal game tomorrow, we will be in a better position. The goal of the team is to finish better than last year (18th) and everything below 10th place would be a failure in coach Alleyne’s mind.
• Austria had a nice win to start into the tournament and put some pressure on the Netherlands. Behind the great effort of Rasid Mahalbasic who scored 28pts and had 10rebs, the team of coach Robert Langer has now chances to go to the next round. It was a very intensive game. Our team has fought very well and we stuck together. We have overpowered the Dutch but we can improve, told the coach after the game to the press.
• Sweden managed to beat Bosnia-Herzegovina behind 21pts in 24 minutes of Omar Zaghden. The Swedish PF got some nice support from his outside scorers Andreas Person and Christopher Czerapowicz who both were in double figures. The Bosnian team relied a bit too much on Dino Hodzic who had to do it all.
• Finland outscored Hungary in the second quarter 30-14 to go for their first win. A surprising performance by the Kouvot SF Matti Nuutinen with 22pts and 10rebs and the awaited scoring efforts of Sasu Salin and Roopi Ahonen were enough to give the Hungarians their first loss.
• One of the tournament favorites Slovenia will start their run for Division A tomorrow when they will play against the other strong team of their group Sweden.

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The favorites

If you consider the different tournaments that have been played so far this season, the main teams to win this year’s edition of the competition are Greece and Serbia. After the astonishing dominance in Mannheim, the Greek team around Nikos Pappas showed a great talent level despite missing some inside forces.

On the other hand, the Serbian team, that is build around the FMP Junior Team core of Andrija Milutinovic, Bojan Subotic and Dejan Musli. The non-consideration of Branislav Djekic or Lazar Radosavljevic may be a surprise for some people but still Serbia looks like a clear cut favorite to reach the Gold medal game.

The outsiders

Some other teams can be considered as potential Medal candidates, and those are the traditional teams like Spain, France or Lithuania. The Spanish guys, that will of course play without Ricky Rubio may lack of some size because they don’t have any player taller than 2m06 in their roster. So the paint has to be kept clean by guys like Toni Vicens or Alberto Jodar who either miss the necessary size or are no inside players. The least that one could say is that the Spanish backcourt of David Garcia, Alejandro Hernandez and Dani Perez is ready to face some tough opposition.

I also spoke with Luis from Draftexpress.com and here is his opinion on the Spanish U18 team.

I think Spain has a chance to reach the medals, although I think Serbia is just on an entire different level and no other team should be able to challenge them (perhaps not even Greece, although they are the other top candidate for the final).

Regarding Spain, I like the fact we have a heady PG in Dani Pérez, a skilled guard in Alex Hernández, aggressive and skilled wings in Jorge Santana or Marcos León, both capable of slash and shoot, an all-around physical freak in Alberto Jodar, and finally, we’ve added some size. You probably remember Toni Vicens, the undersized and over weighted hustler quite effective under the rim.

For France, their performance in Mannheim was really bad, but the uncommon practice methods of their coach seem to have some results. Les Bleus won their tournament in Douai behind a great team effort and playing without their supposed best player in person of Christophe Leonard who signed a pro-contract with Cholet recently. Ludovic Puigcerbier, who is following French youth basketball for basketsession.com gave us his thoughts on the chances for the French in Greece:

After a difficult preparation, the French U18 team could hurt more than one team during this year’s U18 competition. Despite some bad results in Mannheim, Euro-Essone and Manzanares, the French team has however beaten teams like Spain, Croatia or Lithuania during their preparation and has also won the tournament in Douai. The team has the necessary talent with players like Christophe Léonard, Andrew Albicy or Alexis Tanghe but we have to see how the team will play and behave during the tournament. But they have the possibilities to beat every team on any given night. On the other hand, the inside sector looks pretty weak though to be a contender for a medal. I think, they will finish between 5th and 7th place.

Lithuania is always present when it comes to Youth Championships. And this year, with super talent Donatas Motiejunas in the middle, Lithuania could eventually be considered as one of the main teams for a medal. But one player does not make them a Gold Medal team as they significantly miss some offensive quality in the back court. For the Lithuanian federation, the official goal is between 3 and 8 but the current results made some people think that this goal will be hard to reach especially if you take into consideration that Motiejunas was injured during two weeks and he is badly wanted by the U20 team to play with them. So eventually, he may leave after a few games if the U18 team can not reach a medal. Because of the lack of potential in the 1990 generation except Motiejunas and Tautvydas Slezas, the coaching staff added some interesting 1991 born guys where especially Gilvydas Biruta showed good talent so far.

Who else do we have?

Another team that has to be mentioned is of course Croatia and their impressive front court composed of Tomislav Zubcic, Mario Delas and Leon Radosevic. With the addition of Toni Prostran in the backcourt since the Albert-Schweitzer Tournament, the team is improving on the talent side but now remains the question if they can translate this into decisive games. The Croats, who should win their group will have their real opponents in the 2nd phase where they will play against France, Russia, Germany or Ukraine.All in all, this side of the table looks a lot easier to reach the semis than the other side where Serbia, Lithuania, Greece, Spain and Italy fight for the two spots most likely.

The Turkish team played also a interesting tournament in Mannheim and showed some stints of talent in Douai too. However, I have some doubts if they can go for it all in Greece as they seem to depend too much on their PF beat Deniz Kiligli who is not the most regular player in the world. They have some good scoring in the backcourt and feature 16yr old Enes Kanter who can dominate in the paint but it really looks like the left-handed hook machine from Fenerbahce is the guy that decides about the performance of the Turkish team. And one bad game may be enough to fall from 1-4th to 5-8th place.

Germany played an interesting tournament in Douai where they won the games they have to win. In their home event in Mannheim, they lost the game they had to win to qualify for the Top8. So Kay Blümel and his team know how good or how bad they can play, especially after the poor performances in Spain a few days ago. But the absence of some of the main players may be a reason for this as explains the German head coach:

After the very bad performance during the tournament in Spain, where we played without six of our first 10 players (Maurice Stuckey, Simon Schmitz, Robert Hülsewede, Femi Oladipo, Niels Giffey and Alexander Schrempf) and lost heavily against Spain, France and Croatia, the motivation of the team was really down low. We tried to improve this during our training camp these days. Unfortunately, we have to play without Oladipo (torn ankle) and Hülsewede (broken foot) during the Championships which lets a big hole on our SF position. Our goal is to reach the third place in our group first of all and avoid the relegation round.

The game against France in the beginning will be extremely important for us, because they have a team that we can beat.  Russia has improved and showed good games in the Moscow tournament and seems hard to beat. Ukraine is the unknown team in our group and it’s hard for me to predict how good they are right now. But as it will be our third game in the tournament, we have enough time to scout them during the Championship. If we reach our goal and qualify for the next phase, we will see how we continue. But we don’t want to become to high on ourselves and remain with both feet on earth. A place somewhere around 9th like last year would be very satisfying for us.

The Russian U18 team was very disappointing in Mannheim but has found a way back to be a serious outsider in Greece after their performances at the Petrenko Cup in Khimki. The squad has beaten Italy, and the Czech Republic while only failing shortly against the top favorites from Greece. Currently, no world class talent has emerged of the 1990 generation in Russia but the mixture of aggressive guards and long tall forwards that characterizes the Russian game is still present. So they are definitely a team to watch in Amaliada and Pyrgos.

Italy that played a correct tournament in Mannheim will see their top talent of the 1991 generation Nicolo Melli joining them. And with this addition on the wing, everything is possible for the Squadra. The young forward may be one of the best talents in Europe and if he can elevate his game to what he showed during the LegaDue semi-finals, he may be the leader that could help the Italians reach an unpredictable success in the tournament.

Fighting for relegation

Belgium went up to Division A in 2007 behind a great team effort and the nice games of Jorn Steinbach and Jean-Marc Mwema. But these two guys are born in 1989 and will not be available anymore. But some talent of the last year’s win is still on the roster and the addition of Yannick Moray should give the team of Fred Wilmot the necessary power in the back court. On the other hand, no real inside presence on this level will be tough to handle.

Israel, who plays Belgium in the group stage may be the team that can avoid relegation the easiest way in beating the before mentioned in their opener. The departure of Daniel Rom back to Russia lets a big whole in the middle of course but the typical fighting spirit and the athleticism of Carmel Bouchman may help them to stay in the league. This opener will be extremely important for both teams.

Estonia will feature one of the most interesting players to follow of the tournament with Siim-Sander Vene who played already a good tournament last season. Next to him, not too much talent is to be seen but maybe it is worth to take a closer look at the 1991 born Kristjan Rinaldo (yes, that’s his name) who put up some correct stats with the U16 last summer and plays for the Honka Academy in Finland.

Not much to say about the Ukrainian team as I barely know any player there and could not find any results or comments on them on the net. The main goal for the team is to stay in the Division as they have a pretty interesting 1991 generation that could compete next season on the highest level.

Lauris Blaus tries to lead his Latvian team to the necessary wins in their group to stay away from the Relegation round. He will hopefully get some support from the talented 1991 generation around Janis Antrops and Harijs Rubenis.

Bulgaria will be built around their back-court combo of Hristo Zahariev and Bozhidar Avramov. I have put them in this part of the preview one loss against Latvia could mean that the team has to play on relegation round. On the other hand, the team has the talent to pass against Croatia or Turkey but I don’t know how they could handle the inside presence of these two nations.

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