The Polish 3×3 basketball team won both Thursday group matches in Vienna against higher ranked rivals – Lithuania 22:21 after overtime and Belgium 21:15 – and advanced to the playoffs of the World Cup, despite two defeats at the inauguration.
The last match of this phase – Belgium vs. Puerto Rico – will decide which place the Poles will take in the table of group C.
The winners of the four groups will advance directly to the quarter-finals, and the teams ranked 2-3 will compete in a play-off for the right to play in the best eight.
The Biało-Czerwoni (11th place in the FIBA ranking) fought an exciting duel with the Lithuanians (3rd), the leaders of the group after the first day of the competition. In an even match, almost point for point (20:20), extra time was needed, and in it the points for the victory were scored by the middle Adrian Boguckiunder-23 world champion. He had nine points and seven rebounds overall.
In the meeting with Belgium (5th) there were no such great emotions, because after the first even minutes, the players had the advantage coach Piotr Renkiel began to grow steadily (8:5, 10:5, 14:7). With the victory, the Poles reciprocated their rivals for the defeat a year ago, in the quarter-finals of the World Cup in Antwerp (14:18).
The best scorer of the meeting with Belgium was the most experienced player of the team, 36 years old Przemyslaw Zamojski (10-time Polish champion in traditional basketball), who scored eight points. On Tuesday, the white-and-red team started the World Cup with two defeats against lower ranked opponents – Puerto Rico 18:21 and Israel 19:21.
This is Poland’s seventh start in the world championship. So far, the team has twice placed in the “four” – in 2019 it won bronze, and the year before it took fourth place. In 2022, she was eliminated in the quarterfinals. Poles also brought the bronze medal from the European Championships in 2021.
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