GB U20s Fall Short Against Germany - Hoopsfix.com

GB U20s Fall Short Against Germany

GB U20 women suffered a 58-69 loss at the hands of Germany on Monday, in the fourth fixture of their Division B European Championship campaign in Bulgaria.

Janice Monakana led GB with 16 points and eight rebounds, Shequila Joseph added 12 points and Cheridene Green contributed eight points and 11 rebounds.

Following the game, Monakana spoke to gbbasketball.com:

“We played better team basketball today. We found good open shots and managed to get to the foul line, it was a good game and a tough loss for us.”

The final score line did not truly reflect how close the game was and commenting after the game Head Coach Peter Buckle highlighted this:

“GB’s under-20 women played a physical and tough encounter today against Germany and battled all the way through.

“The end score certainly doesn’t indicate how tight and close the game was and down the stretch Germany made the most of some opportunities, unfortunately we didn’t and that was the difference in the game.

Certainly our work rate, rebounding and team defence kept a high scoring team pretty low so it was a good effort by our side.”

It was Monakana who opened up the scoring for GB in the first quarter and she was well supported by her team mates as GB had seven players adding to the scoreline including an early three from Megan Lewis. After ten minutes of play, Germany held an early four point lead, 18-14.

Joseph penetrated the German defense early in the second quarter and Monakana contributed six more points, however Germany went on to outscore the GB side17-13 as they left the court for the half time break trailing by eight points, 35-27.

A positive start to the third quarter saw GB cut the deficit in half taking the score to 35-31 after just one minute of play. GB worked hard on defense and set the tone early on as they forced a 24-second violation from Germany and finished out this quarter, holding their opponents to just nine points.

Only four points separated the teams going into the final period and with some long range shooting from Joseph and scores from Harriet Ottewill-Soulsby and Green, GB brought the game back to a 1-point game, 56-55 with just over two minutes remaining.

This was however the closest GB would get as Germany finished out the game on a 13-4 run to remain undefeated in the competition on a final scoreline of 69-58.

For full box score please click here.

Great Britain is in action again tomorrow, Tuesday 8 July against Portugal with an earlier tip time of 09:30 (GMT).

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