The semi-finals have been played in Mannheim this Friday and Germany U18 reached the Final after beating Team USA in the second semi-final while Australia overcame Germany U17 in the first game of the evening. Beforehand, the classification games have been held with no major upsets.
The US Sports Arena was packed on Friday evening and the temperature was raising to the maximum as the Semi-Finals decided who will play the Final of the 25th Albert Schweitzer Tournament. Arriving in Mannheim during the game for the 9th place between China and Greece, the stands were already packed and the fights for the good seats were ongoing.
- The German U17 team did the maximum out of their schedule and came to the semi-finals with only one loss against their older friends from the German U18 team. However, the semi-finals showed the team of Frank Menz’ that they have already reached their maximum. The team was in the game during the first 10 minutes where they played excellent team basketball and could stop the Australian offense. But the Aussies stepped up in defense afterwards and the German team had a lot of trouble to even get a normal open shot or a basket. During the 2nd and 3rd quarter, the German team could only score 11 combined points while Australia had 35. The Aussie team had once again a tremendous team effort starting with energetic defense that totally took the Germans out of the game. Offensively, it was Anthony Drmic who was the top scorer with 17pts while on the German side, Paul Albrecht had 11pts.
- The second semi-final between Germany U18 and USA was a lot closer. However, Germany had several times the possibility to make a decisive break and take double-digit leads but it looked like they did not want to win as they missed free-throws, layups or turned the ball over. With Kevin Bright still absent and Philipp Neumann who looked a bit sick or injured, the German team managed however to bring home a deserved win against an US squad that was falling too much into 1-1 basketball instead of playing as a team. Falko Theilig did a tremendous job on the PG position playing probably his best game of the tournament while Neumann was not forcing it once and showed that he can be an excellent passer and certainly deserved more than his 3 credited assists. But it was mainly on defense where the German giant did a great job closing his own basket like a goal keeper in the second half and hitting an extremely important three point shot out of the dribbling when the game was close. Daniel Theis emerged with his athleticism and grabbed 10 rebounds in addition to his 8 pts while the US team was lead by Ryan Boatright who had 19pts and 10rebs. Germany will now face Australia in a unprecedented final on Saturday while the United States will meet the German U17 team for the Bronze Medal.
- Lots of German team could been spotted in the US Sports Arena on Friday as the German Cup will be played in Frankfurt this weekend and several teams used the short distance to take a look at the future of the Bundesliga. We saw at least the following teams through one or several executives or coaches: Brose Baskets Bamberg, ratiopharm Ulm, TBB Trier, LTi Giessen 46ers, Paderborn Baskets and there were certainly more.
- On the NBA side, we could spot the following among others the Indiana Pacers, Memphis Grizzlies, Philadelphia 76ers and the Portland Trailblazers.
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