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USA Juniors Out-Grit Slovenia 77-72 For Sixth Win

THESSALONIKI, Greece (July 19, 2003) -- Daniel Brown (Illinois/Maywood, Ill.) and Paul Davis (Michigan State/Rochester, Mich.) scored six and four points respectively in a game deciding 12-3 fourth quarter run to lead the USA Junior World Championship Team (6-1) to a hard fought 77-72 victory over Slovenia Saturday afternoon in Thessaloniki, Greece.

With the win, the USA’s second over Slovenia in the championship, the USA will conclude play at the Junior World Championship facing Puerto Rico on Sunday in a game to decide fifth place. In quarterfinal play July 14, the U.S. handed Puerto Rico a 106-70 setback. Puerto Rico defeated Turkey 85-78 on Saturday to advance to the fifth place game.

The USA was eliminated from the medal round semifinals after losing to Australia Wednesday. Despite ending quarterfinal play in a three-way tie with Group E opponents Australia and Lithuania, based on the International Basketball Federation’s (FIBA) tie breaking formula of the point differential between the three tied teams for their games against each other, Australia earned the Group’s number one seed, Lithuania ranked second and USA fell to third.

“This is a very difficult game to play when you’re knocked out of the medal round and have to come back and play an afternoon game like this, it’s hard to get your team ready to play. Both teams did a good job of battling, it wasn’t a pretty game, but it was still a hard fought game,” said USA mentor Ernie Kent. “It’s a big win. This team like a lot of teams could easily have just folded in and looked forward to going home. But they battled, and battled through some adversity in the game, and obviously adversity in the tournament not being in the medal round, to win another game. We’re now 6-1 over here and 11-1 overall (5-0 in the 2003 Global Games) on this trip with another big game coming tomorrow. If we can somehow get that done I think that would be huge and say a lot about this group of guys.”

“Today they just hung in there and we hung in there with them because this isn’t about getting on guys this late in this, it’s more about encouragement and keeping them moving forward as best as you can. We fought back and they did have a refuse to lose attitude. “Dee” Brown and Paul Davis hit big buckets down the stretch and we got big defensive stops down the stretch to put the game away,” Kent added.

The U.S. carried a 57-53 lead into the final quarter, however, Slovenia slugged its way back and after outscoring the U.S. 9-4, regained the lead 62-61 with 4:09 remaining.

To the rescue was Daniel Brown and the 3-pointer. While the U.S. entered the game having made an average of 10 3-pointers a game, the were just 1-of-11 from three in the first three quarters. “Dee” Brown found the mark from behind the 3-point arc with 3:34 to play to lift the U.S. into the lead 64-62, then, on a designed play for Daniel Brown during a timeout, he found the target from three again, increasing the USA lead to 67-62 with 3:09 to play.

On the second Daniel Brown 3-pointer, Kent said, “It was a designed play right out of the timeout that we came out of. It was a inbound play, Dee had gotten into a little bit of a groove and hit a three a couple of possessions earlier, we wanted to give him another look at it and it was a big bucket at a big time in the game.”

“I wanted to do whatever it would take to give me and my teammates a victory,” stated USA guard Daniel Brown. “I didn’t shoot the ball well today, but my teammates always have confidence in me and I’ve got confidence in myself that I’ll knock it down and fortunately I was able to make two big shots for us.”

Following a miss by Slovenia, it was Davis’ turn. Davis drained a jumper to up the U.S. advantage to 69-62 with 2:23 remaining, and with the score standing 71-65, he nailed another short jumper that pushed the USA advantage to 73-65 with 1:35 to play. Slovenia did manage to get within four points with 49.7 seconds left, but the U.S. made four of its last six free throws to earn the victory.

Davis led the USA scoring, finishing with 20 points on 8-of-14 shooting, and added a team high eight rebounds. Daniel Brown finished with 17 points, while Shakur was credited with 10 points, and team highs of four assists and five steals. Slovenia was paced by Zagorac’s 26 points, while former Michigan State player Erazem Lorbek finished with 12 points and 15 rebounds.

The USA juniors survived a cold shooting performance, one that saw it sink just 44.9 percent (31-69 FGs) of its tries from the field overall, including just 3-of-16 from 3-point. Slovenia shot and even cooler 43.5 percent (27-62 FGs) from the field, but out rebounded the Americans 43 to 36. The difference was Slovenia’s 28 turnovers.

The United States started slowly, spotting Slovenia a 15-4 lead. Down 21-10 with 3:14 remaining in the quarter, Daniel Brown scored five points and Mustafa Shakur (Friends Central High School/Philadelphia, Pa.) scored the quarter’s final six points as the USA closed the quarter on a 13-0 run and took the lead for the first time with 1 second remaining when Ryan Hollins (UCLA/Pasadena, Calif.) made a steal and found Shakur down court for a layup.

“We came out with a lot more energy in the second half and we tried to get everyone involved and make the extra pass and it worked very well” said Skakur. “I tried to give as much energy as possible and get my teammates involved and let the game come to me instead of rushing shots and trying to create too much which I’ve done in previous games. When I did that I played very well. I also tried to play as hard as I could defensively, that’s where it all starts - on defense, to win games.”

Outscoring Slovenia 8-3 to open the second quarter, the U.S. lead was 31-24 with 7:50 to play before halftime. But Slovenia, behind six points from Sasa Zagorbac, assembled a 13-2 spurt to regain the lead and went in at halftime ahead by four, 39-35.

Already without the services of J.J. Redick (Duke/Roanoke, Va.) who is out with an injured hamstring, the USA may have lost the services of starter De’Angelo Alexander (Oklahoma/Midwest City, Okla.) as well. Alexander sprained his left ankle late in the second quarter and did not return. He is listed as questionable for Sunday’s game.

In other results on Saturday, Angola defeated China 85-73 to claim 13th place, while Malaysia won its first game, defeating Iran 77-67 to finish in 15th place. In games to be played later Saturday, Croatia (5-1) will square off against Australia (5-1), while host Greece (5-1) will try its luck against Lithuania (4-2). The winners of the evening’s semifinals games will meet Sunday in the gold medal game.