After successes against Montenegro (73-67) and Hungary (78-54) in November 2021, the Blues continue their faultless, before returning to Portugal on Sunday (6:00 p.m.), in Matosinhos (suburb of Porto) this time .
If Vincent Collet's players show the same application as in the first match, they shouldn't encounter any problem against the 58th nation in the world, as the gap between the two teams seems large.
At the Palais des Sports in Dijon, the Blues however missed their start to the match, exceeded in intensity and sometimes absent in defense.
Led 17-9 three minutes from the end of the first quarter, they woke up following a saving time-out taken by Collet, and were only one possession behind on the edge of the second quarter (17-15).
Above all, the France team lost twelve balls in the first half (18 in total), a figure far too high at international level.
"We were sluggish at the start, we had a really bad first quarter in attack with a lot of lost balls", noted Vincent Collet at the microphone of France 4 at the end of the meeting.
In attack, it was sometimes laborious, especially in setting up the systems, a consequence, no doubt, of the short international windows available to the staff of the Blues, also deprived of their French internationals who play in the Euroleague and the NBA, retained by their clubs.
Despite everything, the French team took the upper hand over the Portuguese in the third quarter, by sharing the ball more in attack.
Thus, four players finished with more than ten points, including interior Louis Labeyrie, top scorer with fifteen units.
Frenchman Louis Labeyrie dunks against Australia in their match for 3rd place in the World Cup on September 15, 2019 in Beijing WANG Zhao AFP / Archives
The match then turned to demonstration against the Portuguese, physically marked.
"The undermining work ended up exhausting them, we saw that in the second half they were cooked," commented Collet.
© 2022 AFP