Croatia beat Portugal

Croatia stamped their authority early in the first period as they put together a run of 11 points (15-5). Portugal struggled to pierce the zone applied by their opponents forcing them to take a lot of shots from the perimeter with little success. Croatia used their height to their advantage as they dominated the boards and pushed the score up (22-10) at the break.

Portugal became more aggressive in attack and defence and came back into the match with a series of 3-point shots (23-20) to bring the game back into life. Croatia reverted back to zone and regained the advantage and went into the interval with a good lead (33-24).

Shy of 3-points in the first half Croatia hit 2 as maintained their advantage in the 3rd period (41-34). Luiane Livulo’s foul problems hampered Portugal defensively and Croatia exploited the space created by her absence for some easy points in the paint. Portugal refused to be intimidated and only conceded the period by 2 points.

With Portugal having to take risks, they left themselves open at the back, which Croatia exploited and pushed their advantage to 20 points with just under 3 ½ minutes remaining in the game,

Portugal difficulty in reading Croatia’s transition game did not allow them to reduce the deficit giving Croatia their first victory (73:60)

The Croatian Head coach was so happy with the win that she found it difficult to put into works “I am very happy and I hope we continue to play like this for the rest of the competition”

Rui Gomis, Portugal’s head coach admitted: “I have mixed feeling, first I am happy because this is the first time at U16 that my country has played such a close game against Croatia and the feeling is that with a little bit more cleverness and experience we could do better than Croatia.

We did not score many 3-points today and we could not stop their transition game that is very good. We noticed that Bosnia had problems with Croatia transition game and we worked on it but our players did not understand it but I am still happy with the girls as they did not give up and fought all through the game. We have to improve in one area for the next round, we are not boxing out enough and losing points on rebounds which makes a difference, otherwise we are okay.

Full statistics are available at here