Vezenkov and Bulgaria will help everything possible to shock the stars of Turkey
Today, the men’s national basketball team of Bulgaria goes out for its second match of the group stage of EuroBasket 2022. Rosen Barchovski’s boys face the other big favorite in our group – the team of Turkey, made up of a number of classy players, and the match between the two teams will start at 17:15 Bulgarian time and will be broadcast live on BNT 3 from Tbilisi Arena.
One hour before the start of the clash – at 4:15 p.m., the special studio of Sports TV, dedicated to the championship of the Old Continent. Today’s guests will be the president of basketball Levski Konstantin Papazov and the selector of the junior national team Daniel Klechkov.
Otherwise, the situation in our group after the first round is as follows: Spain, Turkey and Belgium are in the top three positions with an asset of 1-0, while Georgia, Montenegro and Bulgaria rank behind them due to their defeats in the first matches. Today’s program in Tbilisi begins with a match between Montenegro and Belgium at 2:30 p.m., and at 8:00 p.m. the hosts from Georgia face the world champions from Spain.
The national team will not face their second straight major test today after losing 87-114 to Spain in their first European Championship game in 11 years on Thursday. The Lions made a lot of mistakes defensively and in very few cases managed to match the speed and pace of the game of La Furia, who dominated the basket and shot extremely hard, after scoring 15 three-pointers in 33 attempts from behind the arc . The only positive from the whole situation for the tricolors is the fact that they managed to score 87 points in the basket of the 2019 World Cup champions – a mark that was last passed by the USA team, which strung 95 points through the Spanish defense in the fourth final between the two teams in The Tokyo Olympics last year.
The coach of Bulgaria, Rosen Barchovski, is expected to be not at all satisfied with the performance of his basketball players in a defensive plan, but he expressed confidence that his team will look much better in the next matches. Yesterday, the “lions” went out for their official training before the match with Turkey, after which Stanimir Marinov and Pavlin Ivanov expressed readiness that the team is motivated to show better today.
Ivanov came on strong in the first game against Spain, ranking second in the scoring column with 16 points in 18 minutes of playing time on 6/8 shooting from the field. The new guard of the Balkan club compensated for another hesitant performance of Dee Bost, who did not get any open spaces and realized only 6 points, to which 7 assists were added. The naturalized American said yesterday that he will try to be more aggressive today, especially against the team he knows very well due to his continued stay in Turkey’s Galatasaray.
We can’t help but note the great debut of Bulgarian basketball star Alexander Vezenkov at EuroBasket 2022. The leader of the “Lions” did not look like a debutant, but like a competitor with hundreds of games in such championships, after finishing with a double-double of 26 points and 11 struggle at 8/11 shooting from play in the match against Spain. Captain Chavdar Kostov was extremely aggressive off the bench and took as many as 15 shots from the game – the most of all, finishing with 13 points.
One of the big problems of our national team is the accumulation of fouls in the centers. In the game against Spain, starter Emil Stoilov got off to a great start with 6 points in the first few minutes, but two quick fouls sent him to the bench and put him off the pace. Andrey Ivanov also had two fouls early in the second quarter, with the low-five schemes again brought into use by Rosen Barchovski.
Team Turkey earned a valuable but not convincing victory to kick off EuroBasket 2022 after beating Montenegro 72-68 on Thursday. The southern neighbors were not hesitant throughout the match, and the latter in the last minutes managed to create the turnaround and thanks to the individual performances of the guard of the Philadelphia Seventies Sixers Furkan Korkmaz to invent the success. It is the hero from their first match, however, who is questionable for today’s meeting, as he has suffered back spasms.
Turkey coach Ergin Ataman was shown to be unhappy with the performance of his players, describing their performance as “terrible” in the post-match press conference. The specialist remained frustrated by his team’s poor shooting and the soft play of his tall players, who allowed Bojan Dubljevic to take over their basket in the second half. Ataman described Bulgaria as “the weakest team in the group”, but admitted that he expects a tough match today, mainly because of the audience of Alexander Vezenkov and Dee Bost, who, according to him, and not only, are the two most important players in our team.
A whole galaxy of stars are competing for the Turkish national team at the moment. Shane Larkin is one of the leaders of the current club European champion Anadolu Efes, Furkan Korkmaz has been playing alongside Joel Embiid in Philadelphia for five years now, Chedi Osman competes for the Cleveland Cavaliers, Alperen Shengyun is one of the most prominent young talents in the NBA, Sertach Sanlu plays for Barcelona, and Melih Mahmutoglu already has incredible experience behind him in the Euroleague with the Fenerbahce team.
PROBABLE STARTING FIVE:
BULGARIA: Dee Bost, Stanimir Marinov, Chavdar Kostov, Alexander Vezenkov, Emil Stoilov
TURKEY: Shane Larkin, Furkan Korkmaz (questionable), Cedi Osman, Alperen Shengyun, Sertach Sanlu
Photo: FIBA