Event News



In Pool B of the Men's event, Great Britain took on Germany in the second game of the day at the Carioca Arena.

In a nervy start for both teams, it was Germany who were able to capitalise around the paint to take a 6-0 lead before Great Britain found the basket to level the game on 12 points apiece at the close of the first quarter. The game continued end to end in the second, but at half time it was the GB Men who had found a way to push ahead by 31-24 at half time.

The third quarter remained close with Great Britain outshooting Germany by 18-15 to extend their lead to 49-39. From there, the GB Men maintained their focus and drive to go 4-0 in the group stages with a 66-52 victory.

Dirk Passiwan, Germany’s top scorer with 18 points, said: “We know that GB is a tough team: we want to take their inside game away, we wanted to stop Ian Sagar – our big threat there. Great Britain scored well today from outside with the skill of the bench. They were up by 10 and to fight back, it’s hard. We didn’t get close enough to open the game a bit, it was a tough game, we played a great team and now we have a final game against Brazil tomorrow.”

Ian Sagar, Great Britain’s top scorer with 21 points, said: “We knew that Germany had had a couple of disappointing results for them, so we knew that they would come out firing and they did – it caught us by surprise, the physicality and their shootings – they were up 6-0. But we took control of the game after that with some clever substitutions from Head Coach Haj Bhania: slowed the game down and played to our strengths, rather than Germany’s style of play. It was a battle all the way through the game, we had to grind it out and we did.”


For full match statistics https://www.rio2016.com/en/paralympics/wheelchair-basketball-mens-group-b-preliminary-wb-19