Rachid Meziane responded on Friday, August 9, to the close encounter between the players of the two teams in Bercy. A match won by the French 81-75 after extra time.
Belgium coach Rachid Meziane said the match proposed by the Blues “sometimes looks like a fight” after his team's defeat in the semi-finals of the Olympic Basketball Championship (81-75 m), Friday, August 9.
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“Overall, we dominated the first 15 minutes, then we allowed this French team to express themselves with their euphoria, their energy and their aggression. I'm sorry to say it but we played basketball, where sometimes it was like fighting on the other side,” said Meziane.
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“I'm proud to have played 45 minutes of basketball,” added the technician, who is also the coach of the basketball players at Villeneuve d'Ascq. “There is a lot of disappointment and frustration. But there is no reason to be sad. We are still in a real battle against this French team that was able to count on 11 players in the deliberations, where it was more complicated for us,” explained the coach of the Belgian Cats, who only scored eight points through their substitutes, compared to 29 for the Blues.
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“We lost 21 balls (actually 22, editor’s note), we gave them 19 offensive rebounds. That gives them a lot of second chances and a lot of points. If we had more control, discipline and rigor in at least one of these statistics, the game would have been different,” said Rachid Meziane. The Belgian team, the 2023 European champion after eliminating France in the semi-finals (67-63), will face Australia on Sunday in an attempt to win its first Olympic medal in history.
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