The Netherlands ground out win over Canada men

The penultimate day 2 game in the Carioca Arena saw Canada take on the Netherlands in another great Pool A clash.

At the end of a fast-paced opening 10 minutes, it was the Netherlands who earned the final points of the quarter, but Canada edged it, 10-9. With the Netherlands’ shots not falling at the start of the second, the Canadians continued to build their lead to enter half time up by 19-15.

Rallying together, the Netherlands roared into action in the third: quickly leveling the game on 19 points apiece before combining sharp shooting with great hustle on defence to race ahead by 33-23. The Canada Men’s Team fought until the very end, but it was the Netherlands who earned a 49-32 win.

Nik Goncin, Canada’s top scorer with 12 points, said: The game went better than yesterday; still not what we wanted – I mean we scored 32 points, which is unacceptable. We try to keep teams under 50 points which is what we did so defensively we did fine, offensively we have some things we have to work on.”

The Netherlands player, Marc Van de Kuilen said: “It was a bit of a struggle in the beginning: we didn’t finish the scores - we had enough chances but at the beginning we just didn’t finish them; luckily for us the Canadians did the same. But in the end we finished quite well. It was an important game as you need the wins to get further in the tournament, so this was an important win.”

For full match statistics click here https://www.rio2016.com/en/paralympics/wheelchair-basketball-mens-group-a-preliminary-wb-11