Israel's reserve team says goodbye to the title of European champion after four years.
In 2018 we won the tournament for the first time, in 2019 we won for the second time.
Then came two years in which the championship did not take place because of the corona and everything has an end.
The magic journey ended with a loss in the semi-finals to Spain 84:75.
"La Ruha" is taking revenge in Israel, to whom she lost in the final in Tel Aviv in 2019.
They added a lot of respect to themselves, photo: FIBA
Against a fantastic team, Israel fought for honor despite the loss.
Even in this game against a significantly superior opponent, we saw the character of the team in blue and white.
In the first half it looked like it was going to defeat.
It was easy to break, but Oren Aharoni's players not only didn't break, they also knew how to pressure the Spaniards and reach minus five towards the end.
Noam Dovaret played for Pantheon, with 26 points, erased the bad season he had in Hapoel Jerusalem and also proved that in the near future he will be a guard at a high European level.
One of the standouts of the tournament without a doubt.
The loss is unpleasant, but really not terrible.
This championship proved that Israel can stand on its own at these ages and if it ends today with a bronze medal, it will be perfect.
We lost the game in the first half.
The regional weapon that we went with successfully throughout the tournament did not work this time.
Teams didn't really know how to eat this defense and we also forced them to throw from the outside, which caused the percentages against us to be low.
In contrast, the Spaniards knew how to move the ball correctly and also scored a high three-point percentage (13 in 54 percent).
Our strength throughout the tournament was in hiding shortcomings, but not this time and the differences in quality were too great.
However, we will say again on the macro level that this team did good for Israeli basketball, for itself and for its players who received a tremendous boost and most of them were exposed and proved that there is a future.
Take for example Harel Rinsky and Eitan Borg, not to mention what this championship did to Gilad Levi.
Rinsky.
Excellent tournament, photo: FIBA
We met an impressive team in the tournament that is the favorite to win the championship and as mentioned we gave them some heart palpitations towards the end.
To understand the power of the Spaniards, you can simply look at their statistics - an unbeaten tournament, an average of 20 points difference per game, first place in attack with almost 90 points and four players from top teams in Spain: Juan Nunes (Real Madrid), Michael Caicedo (Barcelona), Giam Fernando and Milan Jimenez (Valencia) with 120 (cumulative) first league, Euroleague and Eurocup games last season.
In front of them stood a team made up of (apart from a spokeswoman) National League players.
They gave it their all, were the only team in the tournament that lost to Spain by a single digit margin, but succumbed to a better team.
the spanish
Today they were bigger than us, photo: FIBA
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