San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
Wiggins’ flurry not enough to rescue Canada
Tomas Satoransky ended Canada’s hopes of making the Tokyo Olympics.
Satoransky’s fadeaway, offtheglass jumper with 1.8 seconds left in overtime wound up being the deciding basket in the Czech Republic’s 103101 win over Canada in an Olympic qualifying tournament semifinal at Victoria, British Columbia, on Saturday.
It was a wild end to a wild game: Canada was down by six with less than 20 seconds left in regulation before the Warriors’ Andrew Wiggins scored six of his 22 points in a span of 7.5 seconds to tie the game, and then the Czechs rallied from a fivepoint deficit in the final 2:18 of overtime.
Blake Schilb scored 31 points for the Czechs (21), who will play Greece in Sunday’s title game at Victoria. All four sites of qualifying tournaments — Lithuania, Canada, Serbia and Croatia — will hold championship games Sunday to determine the last four teams in the Olympic men’s basketball field.
Canada trailed by 12 points with 8:30 left in regulation and was down by nine in the final minute of the fourth before forcing overtime with a frantic comeback.
Canada then scored the first five points of overtime, but got outscored 92 the rest of the way and will miss the Olympics for the fifth consecutive time. The Canadians last made the Olympic field in men’s basketball in 2000.
Nick Calathes scored 18 points and Rick Pitinocoached Greece erased an early 14point deficit to beat Turkey 8163 and advance to the region championship game.
Kaunas, Lithuania:
Mike Tobey scored 27 points and grabbed 12 rebounds, Luka Doncic of the Dallas Mavericks was one rebound shy of a tripledouble and Slovenia eased past Venezuela 9870.
Doncic finished with 23 points, 13 assists and nine rebounds for Slovenia (30), which will play host Lithuania (30) on Sunday with a berth in the Tokyo Olympics on the line.
Domantas Sabonis scored 17 points, Jonas Valanciunas added 15 and Lithuania pulled away in the second half to earn a spot in the Kaunas final by beating Poland 8869.
Belgrade, Serbia: Vasilije Micic scored 21 points, Nemanja Bjelica added 18 and host Serbia moved into Sunday’s final at Belgrade against Italy by beating Puerto Rico 10284.
Filip Petrusev and Danilo Andjusic each scored 15 points and Milos Teodosic finished with 11 points and 10 assists for Serbia (30), which won the silver medal at the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Olympics.
Italy used a 170 run in the third quarter to build what became a 32point lead, and had no trouble reaching the final with a 7959 win over the Dominican Republic.
Split, Croatia: Germany closed the game on a 192 run to stun host Croatia 8676 and move into the championship game against Brazil.
Maodo Lo scored 29 points and added eight assists for Germany (30), which got 13 points from Joshiko Saibou and 11 from Andreas Obst.
Bojan Bogdanovic did all he could for Croatia, scoring 38 points on 11for19 shooting.
Vitor Benite scored 22 points for Brazil (30) in its 10274 win over Mexico. Rafael Luz scored 12 points and Alex Garcia scored 11 for Brazil, which outscored Mexico 5427 from 3point range.