European Prospects

After three days of high level competition, the 23rd edition of the Douai World Tournament continued today. Having arrived only today in the city of Northern France, it did not last long to see already some big action.

• Because the first game of Saturday ended in a big brawl between the Lithuanians and Puerto Rico after which, the Greens left the court and stopped playing at the score of 58-56 in favor of Puerto Rico with 5mins42 to go. Beforehand, the game was already pretty physical and the referees let allowed a lot of contact which frustrated players on both sides. The whole thing ended up in a rebound situation where players from both teams landed on the floor and hitting each other with their feet. The benches stormed the court and some verbal exchanges happened after which the teams went back to their corners and the Lithuanian coaches decided to stop playing after having 6 of their players disqualified and 2 out with 5 fouls. Coming back to what happened on the basketball field before, Donatas Motiejunas did not really look great as he forced several difficult shots being at 4 out 15 at that moment. He got some scoring support by Gediminas Bertasius and Gediminas Orelikas but none of them showed great things today. For Puerto Rico, Mike Rosario was the biggest scoring thread with 18pts but a shooting selection to be checked again. 
• The second game of the day was a bit calmer with the North American match up between Canada and the USA 2K All-American team. The US boys played probably their best first half of the tournament and even went up to more than 30 points in the 2nd half. Canada managed however to come back into the game with being at minus 9 with a minute to go behind some long distance threes by their guards. Despite having shot a couple of airballs from the free-throw line, the US team had in general a correct shooting effort with some nice series of three point bombs by Jordan McRae among others. The player of the game award went however to Cory Joseph who came up with a great 17pts, 8rebs, 6asts and 4stls effort. Canada’s last quarter that they 38-17 was marked by the three point shooting of Simon Bibeau and Laurent Bivard while their typical strong players like Mangisto Arop or Kelly Olynyk were off today.

• France beat Australia in the third game of the day behind a nice fourth quarter run orchestrated by Andrew Albicy and Paul Lacombe. And it was the later one that managed to score the essential free throws in the final minutes. Lacombe was the top scorer for France with 11 points despite only playing only 12 minutes. Australia was led by their forward scorer Cody Ellis who finished with 14pts but only hitting 5 out of 14 shots.
• The day was followed by a limited number of NBA scouts only, as there were the Indiana Pacers, the Philadelphia Sixers and the New Jersey Nets as only teams being recognized. Additionally, several ACB teams and Fortitudo Bologna were present in the arena to scout the young players.
• The three point contest has been won by Corey Joseph from USA 2K who beat Gediminas Orelikas in the final