The second group round of the World Cup in basketball began for the Russian team almost two days ahead of schedule. Despite a 100% guarantee of reaching the next stage of the competition, the wards of Sergei Bazarevich could not be considered a meeting with Argentina as a training session with increased responsibility. After all, all the results of matches played by teams within the first four do not go down in history, but are transferred further through the tournament - and, accordingly, will play a key role in the distribution of tickets to the playoffs of the championship of the planet.
Given the fact that Argentina dealt with South Korea and Nigeria in the same way and made it to the top 16 ahead of schedule, the result of a personal meeting with Latinos was very important for domestic basketball players. In order, if necessary, to have an advantage over them in terms of the most important additional indicator, rather than bite their elbows and regret hopelessly missed chances.
However, the battle with Hispanics was to be the first real test for the team of Sergei Bazarevich in the Middle Kingdom. With all due respect to the previous examiners, they didn’t come close to claiming the world championship awards, or at least a place in the quarter-finals.
All the more interesting is that in preparation for the CM two teams met among themselves in a friendly game. And then super-veteran Luis Skola (on the eve of taking the second place in the list of top scorers in the history of the world basketball championships), together with partners, taught the Russian youth a painful lesson, defeating them with an advantage of 21 points.
And a powerful segment in the middle of the first quarter, at a distance which the Russian team turned sad 0: 6 into pleasing to the eye 17: 9, demonstrated that the team made conclusions from the failure two weeks ago.
A tenacious defense, which Nikita Kurbanov had time to do literally everywhere, crazy three-pointer by Vladimir Ivlev and not defending, but qualitatively practicing their minutes young defenders - every fan would like such or almost such a domestic squad in China.
Moreover, all this happened when Mikhail Kulagin was sitting on the bench, who already in the very opening of the meeting had problems with sorting out personal comments.
But for the entire first half the enthusiasm of the Russian team was not enough. The Argentines quickly orientated themselves in the situation and managed to put pressure on the most vulnerable point in Bazarevich’s construction - the game in positional attack.
And not so much the heroism of Skola, who reached the double-digit mark in the performance graph before the big break, how many points scored after the losses of domestic basketball players made a difference (there were already 16 of them for the debut 20 minutes). Latinos went off with a margin of "+6", and could have earned more if it were not for the "bomb" from behind the arc of Evgeny Baburin, which brightened up the impression of the second quarter that was disastrous for the Russians.
The third, alas, came out no better. Having greased each of their eight three-pointer in a specific game segment, the Russian team released the opponent in a serious margin - at times the Argentinean handicap reached 13 points. We can’t say that Latin Americans really shone, but they didn’t allow themselves to slip in the attack for three to four minutes.
The real X-factor of the meeting was the center Marcos Delia, for whom the battle with the Russians was so far the best match at the World Cup. He took several important rebounds in the attack, regularly made his counterparts earn personal comments, and perhaps he didn’t impress on the free-throw line, blurring more than half of his attempts as a result (three out of seven went to the target).
In the final break, Bazarevich nevertheless managed to find the right words for the wards who were losing threads, and the 11: 0 spurt that revived the intrigue on the site was initiated by the person from whom this was expected, perhaps, at the very least.
Andrei Sopin, previously in China marked only by actions with a minus sign, scored five points in a row, assisted Vorontsevich - and the Russian squad came to life, rushing to save the situation, which had recently seemed hopeless.
The trouble for the Russians was that the 22-year-old point guard from the Super League had to confront in turn two playmakers of the Spanish Euroleague grandees: Facundo Campazzo from Real Madrid and Luca Vildoze from Basque Country. And from Andrei Zubkov, who performed a potentially crucial three-pointer (if the forward had scored an open throw from the corner of the court, and the national team would have taken the lead for the first time in the second half), luck turned away.
In addition, Evgeny Baburin, who played his nine and a half minutes extremely efficiently — his +10 utility score was the best in Bazarevich’s squad — had made five personal comments long before the final siren.
And Argentina, with a solid margin, won the fight for the three-second zone - with 14 rebounds in an attack against the Russian five and incredible for the 40-minute match under the FIBA rules 36 penalties (only two of them were frankly tactical, and the rest the Latinos earned in trying to break through under ring) with only 11 among domestic basketball players - as a result, I finally achieved my goal.
And the hero of the ending was the above-mentioned Campazzo: at “+2” for the Hernandez team he scored the heaviest ball in the aisle, after which he made a decisive interception, “robbed” Sopin, and calmly carried out two attempts from the line. With 21 points in the asset, he became the most productive player in the fight, while the Russians had 18 points who had complete freedom of action in the attack in the Celestial Empire and successfully used Zubkov.
No catastrophe, in fact, happened: despite the defeat from the Argentines, the Russian team retains more than a working chance of reaching the quarterfinals of the World Cup. In the second group round, Bazarevich’s squad will meet with the teams of Venezuela and Poland, which can easily be beaten.
Unless, of course, Kulagin falls out of the game again, and the coaching staff comes up with how to minimize the number of losses. 21 mistakes, many of which happened at really significant moments - this is too much for the primacy of the planet. And, moreover, fights of great tournament significance.