Going on this week is the FIBA U20 European Championship Men and hard-working sports reporter David Hein of heinnews is live in Rhodes to cover the action. From the heinnews website, then, comes reportage of basketball action in … the hotel buffet area?
(Heinnews) – Basketball fans have plenty of great talent to observe at the U20 European Championship including seven Greeks who won the silver medal at the U19 World Championships and Lithuanian stud big man Donatas Motiejunas.
Walking around my hotel in Rhodes, I noticed immediately that this resort is also the players’ hotel for the U20 European Championship.
Heading into the dining area for some evening grub, it’s hard not to notice the Israel team at the buffet. And into the room came the Lithuanian team.
Donatas Motiejunas: The next big thing
Coming into this tournament, a big question was whether Motiejunas would be accompanying the Lithuanians to Greece. The 6-foot-11 center averaged 17.3 points, eight rebounds, 2.7 assists and more than a block per game while shooting 58 percent from field, including 7-of-14 from long range. Motiejunas’s biggest game came against Greece as he totaled 28 points, 15 rebounds and seven assists. Needless to say, I was pretty excited when I saw Lithuania’s next great big man enter the dining room.
The Greek team came in as I was leaving. And this was another team I was really anxious to see how it looked. Of course, with the event taking place in Greece, it would make sense that the best Greece team would show. But just how many of the guys from the silver medal-winning team at the U19 Worlds in New Zealand would show in Rhodes? The final in Auckland was Sunday and the first game in Greece was set for Thursday. That’s not a lot of time to regenerate.
But I was very happy to see the likes of Nikos Pappas, Zisis Sarikopoulos, Vlantimir Giankovits, Kostas Papanikolaou, Kostas Sloukas, Evangelos Mantzaris and Leonidas Kaselakis enter the room. Yeah, this will be a great Greek team. Put them up their as favorites to win the title.
This will be a strong field, however. Turkey are always strong and have loads of talent on this squad, including Melih Mahmutoglu and Mukremin Kilicli.
Among the other talents are Croatians Mario Delas and Tomislav Zubcic; Philipp Schwethelm and Tibor Pleiss of Germany; Niccolo Martinoni of Italy, Spaniard Pablo Aguilar and the French contingent led Edwin Jackson and Antoine Diot.
This list is hardly comprehensive. But it’s a sampling of the future stars on showcase in Greece for the next 10 days.
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