Basketball-blogging

Well, it appears that Latvian basketball team is capable of any surprises, including not so good ones.

We were supposed to win Portugal today. Portugal is not exactly a basketball country. Instead, our team was behind for almost the entire game. For first half, they were 3-5 points behind. I was saying to myself: we will catch up. At one point, they did. They had a small lead, for a half-minute or so. But it did not last.

Then, in the fourth quarter, Portugal took a 17-point lead. It was no longer the question who would win. It was the question by how much. If Portugal wins by less than 15 points, Latvia would still have a chance of advancing to the next round if Spain wins Croatia later tonight. If they won by more than 15 points, Latvia would be out immediately.

At the end, it was 77-67 and our basketball team is now waiting for the outcome of Spain-Croatia and pondering how they managed to lose to Portugal for the first time in Latvian basketball history.

UPDATE: Croatia won Spain by one point (with Croatia scoring the winning basket 3 seconds before the game was over) later on Wednesday and Latvia was eliminated. The coach of the Latvian team resigned on Thursday.