Basketball 3×3

Basketball 3×3. Results of the first week of August 2021

Overview of what happened in early August and what’s to come in 3×3 basketball

In a basketball review 3×3 weeks ago, I mentioned such upcoming events as the next three rounds of the U23 Nations League, Bulut’s second game in BIG3, the German Challenger, the Estonian tournament “Tallinn open”. All this has already been played, we are looking at the results, as well as other 3×3 events and looking into the near future. Go.

Nations League U23

The guys had their first defeats in tours. After three consecutive first places in the fourth round, the Russian U23 team lost in the final match to Poland (14-21). In the fifth round, she returned to the highest level, returning the debt to the Poles (21-17). But in the sixth place, she completely fell out of the top three, losing to Slovakia (17-18).

However, after the fifth round, the Russians won the first place of the regular season of their Europe 1 conference ahead of schedule and received a ticket to the final of the entire League of Nations, which will be held on September 17-18 in Bucharest.

But the girls were greatly let down by problems with the composition. Holding on to second place after three rounds, only three of the Russians came up to the second triplet, but on the very first day, the injury left the Russian women’s U23 team and all together. In this 2v2 mode, they reached the final, where they lost to Austria, but withdrew from the remaining two rounds, depriving themselves of the opportunity to compete for a ticket to the general league final.

The previous final of the League of Nations, held in 2019, was won by the French against the boys, and the Russians against the girls. The champions then were the future Olympic silver medalists – the sisters Frolkina and Yulia Kozik, as well as Ekaterina Polyashova.

In the men’s final, the French turned out to be stronger than our trio – Andrey Kiselev, Sergey Krivykh and Dmitry Cheburkin, who became the most productive player in the final games, gaining 10.8 points per game.

But back to 2021. From the Europe-America conference (France, Israel, the Netherlands, Spain, Great Britain, USA), both French teams will go to the Romanian final. After three rounds in the conference “Europe 2” (Lithuania, Ukraine, Romania, Latvia, Belarus, Estonia), both Lithuanian teams are leading.

And the games of the Africa-Asia conference (Egypt, Egypt U21, Mongolia, Nigeria) have not even started yet, all 6 rounds will be held there from August 24 to 30. In the new category of the League of Nations – U21, after three rounds for both girls and guys, Lithuania is again in the lead.

Challenger in Hamburg

The last week was very successful for the Lithuanian teams in 3×3 basketball. Youth supported and more experienced players. In the German Challenger, the recent finalists of the Lithuanian open tournament “Hoptrans” – the team “Utena” became the first. This was their first victory in the history of the Challengers, in the final the Serbian Liman was defeated (18-16). Participated in these games and rival “Utena” in the final “Hoptrans” – “Shakyai”, but could not get past the Serbian “Pirot” in the quarterfinals (17-20).

The path to this victory for Utena was very difficult. The Lithuanians started the group stage with a defeat from the Skopje team (18-21), who made their way through additional qualifying matches. The next match against Lausanne (21-19) became the saving grace. The quarter-final of Utena against Nantes (21-20) turned out to be a real thriller. With an equal score, Ignas Labutis led the Lithuanians to the semifinals.

Graz was defeated with the biggest difference in the score on the way to the final (21-18). Gintautas Matulis scored 12 points in that game, including the winning one. He also won the championship in the confrontation with Lyman, becoming the MVP and the most productive player of the Challenger, gaining 39 points in 5 matches. And his partner Vytautas Shulskis became the leader in assists along with Stefan Kozhich from Liman (14). Both of these Lithuanian players are known to Russian fans for their performances in the United European League 3×3, held in St. Petersburg for three years in a row.