The first day of EH at Skopje was really productive. Four games in action, watching interesting players like swedish Anton Gaddefors (SF, ’89), georgian Tornike Shengelia (SF, ’91), dutchman Thomas Koenis (PF, ’89), czechs David Jelinek (SG, ’90) and Pavel Harcar (PF, ’89), polish Jakub Wojciechowski (C, ’90),… Games started at 14.15h at Boris Trajkovski arenas, around 30 minutes walking from downtown. EH hotel, placed close to the junction between Boulevard Partizanski Odredi and Boulevard Sveti Kliment Orhidski is small, but with kindly people. And you can connect to internet from bedroom. So… Perfect. After having problems to sleep due to a disco 3 meters from our bedroom we woke up ready to walk a bit with the mind still trying to process what happened the night before. Taxi driver converted a 20 minutes trip from the airport to a 45 minutes one. Find the hotel wasn’t easy job. Even asking to another cab, because we follow him. Two cars searching the hotel. Amazing. Welcome to the Former Yugoslavian Republic of Macedonia. Under a sunny sky we spent the morning going around. Charging the batteries for an interesting game between Netherlands and Czech Republic.
The afternoon basketball marathon started with two teams arriving to the match with 2-0 on the standings, and the winner will finish at the top of group C. Czech shooting-guard David Jelinek (’90) is the best raising star of both. The young prospect is under contract with Joventut Badalona (ACB), and spent last season in El Prat (4th division) loaned. Son of former international player Josef Jelinek –also in Skopje watching the games- averaged this season 5.5 points and 2.1 rebounds in 28 games. Currently practicing with big team, he is showing great conditions in Skopje, arriving to the game against dutchmen with 20.5 points, 3.5 rebounds, 3.0 assists and 60% at three points line. At the other side bosnian coach Burhan Alibegovic is doing a great job, putting a high level of intensity to a group of youngsters with interesting kids like Jessey Voorn (SG, ’90), Thomas Koenis (PF, ’89) and Hieronymus Van der List (C, ’89). Not many people attending the battle at the small gym. The game started tied, with Voorn defending Jelinek and Netherlands showing great feelings between players. The main reference of Ron Frantisek, Jelinek. Voorn was missing a lot of shots, but his mind was clear fighting behind with a very serious attitude. The effort of lefty Ewoud Kloos (SF, ’89) and Ralf de Pagter (PF, ’89) made dutchmen do a step forward, arriving to half time with a positive 38-41. Kloos was playing smart, helping on the rebound, shooting easy,… De Pagter was doing his game: intensity, hooks,… Koenis was grabbing rebounds and more rebounds (the best of the tournament with 10.7), running fastbreak in front small men,… Van der List opening the defense with far away shots. Third quarter started and Voorn broke the game. The shooting guard missed three bombs on the first 20 minutes, but recovered scoring five three points shots in a row. The game was becoming orange. Jelinek was the only czech capable to score easy, but power-forward Pavel Harcar (’89) appeared in the right moment to put pressure from long distance. Anyway, it was too late. Netherlands won 72-80. Nice game to begin our macedonian experience. Let’s cross to the big gym and watch an interesting Georgia-Sweden.
“Forbidden pistols” you can see on the door (and also at the pic). Ok. No problem. Georgians and swedish people are also teams with options to earn the promotion to division A. First ones are quite young squad, with their leader Tornike Shengelia (SF, 2.05) borned in 1991, the same age as starting power-forward Nika Metreveli (2.11). Shengelia played this season some games with spanish ACB Pamesa Valencia, while Metreveli has done the same with italians Montepaschi Siena. Not bad. At swedish side the player arriving more on shape to the game was Anton Gaddefors (’89), a small-forward with good percentages behind the arc, long arms and great touch inside the paint finishing lay-ups. He was averaging 17.7 points and 53% on threes. The game was tied, with Tornike Shengelia fourcing many fouls and Gaddefors showing great shooting skills after half time (first half he seemed disconected). The job of power-forward Johan Rönström (’89) when his team was struggling in offense wasn’t enough. Georgia won 62-53 in a gym with only a few scouts (most of them are in division A in Rhodes).
Our third game of Skopje was Great Britain – Poland. 10-26 in the first quarter and the battle was already decided. Benneton Treviso’s center Jakub Wojciechowski (’90) was too much for team coached by Tim Lewis. The first minutes were crazy for englishmen, without finding the solution to stop polish big man. It wasn’t necessary for him play too much (27’), and he finished with 17 points, 6 rebounds and 2 blocks. Great Britain never stopped fighting, basiclly for the good job of outside players Benjamin Mockford (’89) and Tyrone Treasure (’89). William Neighbour (’90), the only english taller than 2 meters, had a lot of problems against Jakub, finishing with 3/12 FGs. Great Britain gave a good image, even the level of both teams players was completely different. At polish side Piotr Pamula (’90) left us good vibrations with his outside shooting capacity, his long arms, great jump and quite good passing skills. Taking a look to his last season stats we can have an idea: 9.4 points and 39% behind the arc at polish first division. Poland won 67-84.
Finally we completed our first day in Macedonia with a game between local team and Bulgaria. Played in the small gym, completely packed, macedonians lost by 30 (62-92). This score surprised all the people because team coached by Emil Rajkovic arrived to the game with two victories in two games, while bulgarians arrived with two losses in two games. Prospect Hristo Zahariev (’90) lead the winners with 13 points and 4 assists. The shooting-guard, who was at last Treviso Eurocamp’s edition, is one of the more elegant players we’ve ever seen, overall penetrating and going from outside to inside. But at the other hand he has huge problems to score from outside, and to make a step forward he needs to improve this a lot. Macedonians, with his leading scorer Marko Simonovski (’89) 40 minutes in the bench, received a 7-21 run in the second quarter. Small forward Petar Apcev (’89) was the only local with good percentages (21 with 3/4 threes). The game ended with all the patriotic crowd clapping his team. Some minutes after we were already inside a taxi on the way to the McDonald’s of the downtown. A chicken menu, with french fries and water, our dinner. The hotel was quite, not like last night.
The rest of results:
Group A: Luxembourg 66 Slovak Republic 96 (Chris Jones 16; Richard Grznár 23). Sweden 3-1, Georgia 3-1, Portugal 2-2, Slovak Republic 1-2 and Luxembourg 1-3.
Group B: Finland 87 Norway 81 (Antti Kanervo 19; Anders Stien 25). Poland 3-0, Finland 2-1, Norway 1-2 and Great Britain (0-3).
Group C: Switzerland 84 Romania 71 (Christophe Varidel 22; Andrei Bercean 19). Netherlands 3-0, Czech Republic 2-1, Switzerland 1-2 and Romania 0-3.
Group D: Hungary 48 Austria 74 (Gergely Toth 10; Alexander Heuberger 15). FYROM 2-1, Austria 2-1, Bulgaria 1-2 and Hungary 1-2.
Photo: Eurohopes
