Slovenia pushed hard in the third period to overcome Finland

Finland’s game plane was simple, give the ball to Lotta Richter (24 points) and keep the ball away from Nika Baric (18 points). This worked well in the first period as they opened up a 6-point lead. The Finnish tactic was working until midway through the second period. Then Slovenia changed their offensive options and started to find gaps and tied the game (26-26) before Baric had a little sequence of her own with 5 points and the pendulum changed camps as Slovenia completed an 11-0 run to lead by 7 points at the break.

Slovenia continued to apply pressure with points coming from all quarters as they completely dominated Finland (23-8) to kill the game off as won the match (67-49).

Full statistics are available at here

Coaches  comments

Ilpo Rantasella (Finland): In this game we played really well in the first 15 minutes and the last five minutes and we played against a very good team. Nika Baric is really a great player. It is really hot in the arena for us coming from up north that’s weird and that what we have to get used to and I am pleased by our efforts but it takes more than one month of preparation to play for 40 minutes but hopefully tomorrow we will.

Damir Grgić (Slovenia – Third from left in picture): I am not sure what to say, we were all nervous at the start and it showed as we found it difficult to find our rhythm in the first period. Things got better in the second period when we started to move the ball around and finally in the 3rd period once we got our zone defence working, the game turned in our favour and suddenly we were 20-points up.