Italy loses game and 2008 Olympics

Maybe someone is waiting for my recap of today’s game.

Well, the truth is I didn’t watch it. The game started at 4.30 PM european time and I was out for a job meeting that ended at 8…

Seems the (devastating, by the way) meeting saved me nearly two hours of real pain: how could I have described a 58-67 loss vs an average opponent like Germany?

Dirk’s smile (!!) is perhaps the funniest thing in this sad afternoon for guidos hoops fans.

The boxscore is also clear enough: when you shoot 13/33 from 2 pt, 5/23 from 3 pt and the other team grabs 52 rebounds vs yours 31 (!!!!!!!!!!!!!!) every further comment should be useless.

I made a little research and found also these info, just to make the picture complete:

– the first half ended 27-27 (no, it’s not a typo. And when I mean “half” it’s two quarters = 20 minutes of play…) 

– Germany missed its first 10 three pointers before Demirel made one

– Italy missed 13 consecutive shots in the second quarter (…)

– in the same second quarter Germany got 19 rebounds, Italy 9 (in the picture Stefano Mancinelli fighting for a rebound with Patrick Femerling). Center Jagla had 6 boards in 6 minutes, three less than our whole team in 10 (!).

– after 25 minutes the scored was tied to an unbelievable 33-33, Germany closed the third quarter with a couple of treys by Herbert and ended the period up nine (37-46, with a 8-0 break). That’s like being up 20 in a “normal” game, I guess.

– in the forth quartes Bargnani scored his only three pointer to make it a two point game (52-54 with 2’20” to go) but Herbert punished us with another one from the long range. Nowitzki had scored his first two behind the arc some minutes before.

So we basically managed to lose a game in which we kept Nowitzki to a quiet 15 points with very bad percentages: 3-10 from two, 2-9 from three.

It was unknown guard Johannes Herber from Alba Berlin (not exactly a basketball powerhouse…) to send us home.

It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to conclude that when you lose games like this, when your overall record in the competition is 2-4, you deserve to fly back home.

It’s unfortunate because not only we will watch the rest of the Euro 2007 on tv – which could be even fun, at least we won’t have to suffer anymore… – but mainly because this quick exit means we won’t go to the 2008 Olympics in China.

That really sucks because I would have liked to see guidos playing vs USA team.

Germany will play (and lose to) Spain tomorrow in the quarterfinals. Russia-France is the first elimination game scheduled, that I would like to catch (and cover here).

The other quartefinals Croatia-Lithuania and Greece-Slovenia are planned for Friday 14th.

Still a lot of hoops to watch, even without Italy.