IZMIR (FIBA World Championship) - Spain have finally secured passage to the Eight Finals in Istanbul with a comprehensive 91-57 victory over Lebanon. They now face Canada in their final pool game.
 
Marc Gasol was dominant for Spain with 25 points and 8 rebounds. While for the Asian wildcards, centre Jackson Vroman was excellent with 22 points and 9 rebounds.
 
Lebanon threatened an upset early on, storming back from 13-6 down behind 12 points and six rebounds – four offensive – in the first term from centre Jackson Vroman to set up a 22-21 lead at quarter time.
 
Any hope Lebanon had though were dashed when, with scores level, Vroman was called for a controversial foul with 4:56 remaining in the second quarter, and then technical fouled for a brief reaction.
 
It was Vroman’s fourth foul, forcing him out of the game, and from there Spain peeled off a 13-2 run to take a 43-32 lead at the main break, with Gasol scoring six points in Vroman’s absence.
 
Spain burst out of the blocks in the third quarter, and while a big El Khatib triple would close the margin to 10, Jorge Garbajosa and Gasol answered immediately and then Spain put on an open court show, the margin reaching 72-47 by three quarter time and 34 by the end of the game.

You can watch complete highlights of the game and an interview with Jorge Garbajosa (7 points) on FIBATV.Com. 

Quotes:

Tad Baldwin : This match was very important to regain our confidence and self-respect. But Spain is one of the most powerful teams in the world. We played to win and showed it in first period. But we could not match Spain’s speed and ability. All of my players did their best. I am happy about our performance.

Ali Fakhreddine: Firstly, it was a difficult game for us. Spain is a big team. I think because of this we were always under pressure. Actually we were good, we did our best.

This match was a very good experience for us, we will learn some lessons from it and we will work harder in the future. Tomorrow, in the Lithuania match, we will do our best, and even we cannot win the game, we will try our best.

Sergio Scariolo: We were pretty good today. We had two ideas before the game, get them in foul trouble and play inside. And especially, we wanted to stop El-Khatib. We did these things and because of this we won.

Felipe Reyes: Today game was important to us. We were coming to this match with two losses and we have to win today as the defending world champion. The first half of game was hard for us and were nervous, but second half we got to enjoy the game. We started to get our offense working better, but even though we won this game, we made some mistakes that we do want to repeat again.

FIBA
 
Paulo Kennedy

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