“Whoever decided that basketball is played by hitting and that when a team is 23 points ahead the other team can do whatever it wants, is wrong.”
MADRID, 3 Ago. (EUROPA PRESS) –
The Spanish women’s basketball coach, Miguel Méndez, has celebrated the victory against Serbia (62-70) in the third and final match of the group stage of the Paris Olympic Games and the passage to the quarter-finals as group leaders and undefeated, although he has been very upset with the refereeing and the permissiveness with the Serbians that came to worry the Spanish.
“I only had the last six or seven minutes left of a basketball that I believe is not basketball. Whoever decided that basketball is played by hitting and that when a team is 23 points ahead the other team can do whatever it wants, is wrong,” he said in statements provided by the FEB.
Beyond the refereeing, he said he was “happy.” “If we were happy when we won by one, today when we won by eight we are eight times happier. I think we played very well for most of the game, we worked very well on their shooters, and we distributed the ball a lot in attack,” he said.
Asked about María Conde, who made her ‘debut’ at the Games after recovering from an injury to her left hand, he said that she is a “very important” player. “She has made a great effort to be here, she has worked very hard over the last two weeks. Today she had a great game,” he said.
“Now we will prepare for the 7th, we will wait for our opponent, and we will go for it. The team is doing well, all the players are engaged, on the court, in the village, in training, the social level of the team is very good and this is very important in such a long competition,” she said.
Finally, he expressed his satisfaction with the way the team is mentally and in terms of preparation for the quarter-finals. “I’m happy with the level we’re seeing, whatever we get… Today’s victory is very important, but we’ll see what we get,” he said.
For her part, María Conde said that they played “great basketball.” “We knew how important it was to win in order to finish first in the group, and this match shows us that we can compete against anyone,” she said.
“I’m very happy to be able to help the team. It’s been difficult to be here without being able to play two games, but I’m very happy to be able to do my part to keep moving forward. It was a very solid game against a great team. They’re very well trained and they made things difficult for us until the end. But I think we stuck to our game plan for the most part and we enjoyed ourselves on the court, which is what we wanted to do,” she said.