The second day of the championship gave us great games by Giles, Vasiljevic, Desrosiers, Zhao and Toro, among many other young stars. Australia and Puerto Rico confirmed that their ambitions to be in the podium at the end of the tournament.
Group A
USA Team keeps showing off. They won Angola 99-56 with Giles and Ferguson scoring 14 and 13 points each. The African team was unable to play their game and only Silvio with 17 points and 7 rebounds could face the best team in the World Championship, so far.
Greece had no mercy of the Philippines, even if they played with the “bench” team, enough to win 85-65. Papagiannis and Charalampopoulos, after the big effort against the Team USA the day before, had a well deserved rest. Nevertheless, Pefanis was there to score 26 points. For the Asian team, once again Mendoza proved to be a top scorer with 19 points.
Group B
The Japanese side could not keep the high performance shown in the first day and suffered a huge defeat from Canada 96-52. Desrosiers scored 20 points and Frase added 17. Only Hiraiwa could barely reply with 13 points and 10 rebounds.
France and Australia played a really exciting game to decide the leader of group B. Gombauld and Noua combined to score 44 but it was the Aussie Vasiljevic who was the main star of the game. A true baller, he is a shooting guard who can score in a million ways. His 18 points gave the yellow team a valuable victory 84-81.
Group C
Puerto Rico beat Italy 58-50 in the key game to decide the first place in group. Once again, Toro led the American with 20 points and 14 rebounds. The “boricuas” Leonardo Tote, who resembles the legendary Toni Kukoc, scored 16 for the European side.
The host team, UAE, received again a huge punishment in the game against Spain. They lost 138-27. It is nice to involve new countries to spread the love for basketball, but sometimes Fiba should think twice if they want to have this kind of teams in their tournaments, which does not provide anything interesting and can only cause injuries.
Group D
Serbia won a hard game against Egypt, which somehow managed to recover after the big loss the day before against Argentina. The final score, 63-81, does not show how hard Peno and Rakicevic alongside their teammates had to play.
Argentina beat China in another key game. Chinese could only find Hu and Zhao, an unstoppable scorer who went to 31 points. But Fjellerup and company were tougher and got the chance to fight Serbia for the first place of the group on Monday.
