WORLD CUP DROUGHT ENDS, BUT IT SURE WASN’T PRETTY
Canadian men shrug off slow start against Senegal to net first win at event since 2002
The third time was the charm for Canada at the FIBA World Cup.
An 82-60 win over Senegal to finish out the opening round marked Canada’s first win in World Cup play in 17 years.
Canada started this tournament with back-to-back losses to Australia and Lithuania and was 0-5 in Turkey in 2010. The last win came on North American soil when Canada defeated Venezuela in Indianapolis in 2002.
The victory didn’t come easy as the Canadians once again fell into their old first-quarter bad habits. This time, however, it was self-inflicted.
For the first time at this tournament, the team managed to stay out of foul trouble in the early going, but the poor starts continued anyway as Senegal came out shooting the ball well, while Canada was hard-pressed to get anything to drop.
“We didn’t make any shots in the first quarter, it felt a little painful. We missed a bunch of layups and a bunch of wide-open threes,” Canada head coach Nick Nurse said.
“We were all just kind of saying, ‘Let’s keep doing what we’re doing. We’re getting the shots we want. We’ll make ’em, they’ll fall eventually.’
“I think we might have been 4-for-19 or something from three in the first half. And then we go like 8-for-17 in the second half? Something like that. We did keep generating those same shots. They started going in and the scoring started.”
Cory Joseph, the man with more international experience than anyone else on the roster, held the hot hand for most of the night, finishing with a game-high 24 points, including 3-for-5 from deep.
The slow start ended in the second quarter as Nurse found a lineup that clicked: starters Melvin Ejim, Kevin Pangos, Joseph and Khem Birch joined by Brady Heslip. That fivesome helped Canada, which trailed by 11 after a quarter, go on a 22-4 run and turn the game around.
Joseph did most of the damage in the third when he caught fire, going for 11 points in the frame.
Pangos, who has taken over the point guard duties with Joseph moving to shooting guard, had 13 in the game with three triples.
Senegal came into the game winless like Canada, but the concern was their length and athleticism around the rim would make for another long night on the boards for Canada.
Instead, Nurse tweaked a few things and kept Ejim and Birch down low to clog up the paint and Canada wound up winning the rebounding battle handily by a 47-32 margin.
Senegal came into the game having dominated the offensive boards in their first two games, but Canada pulled down 22 offensive rebounds.
“That is what we had to emphasize,” said Birch. “They are longer, they are taller, so that’s what I kind of emphasized tonight: just rebounding and just doing the dirty work for my teammates so we could win.”
Birch wound up with 10 rebounds, while Ejim had eight. It was a dominant performance by Canada’s two toughest players.
Canada now heads to the classification round in Shanghai with a comfortable lead on Senegal and games against Jordan and Germany lined up this weekend for both teams.
At stake is a berth in a June 2020 last-chance Olympic qualifying tournament, in which four groups of six teams duke it out to finish first and earn a spot in the 12-team tournament in Tokyo.
Canada’s chances of earning a spot in one of those four groups have been bolstered by the advancement of every other Americas team in this tournament to the second round.
Brazil, Venezuela, Argentina, Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic and the United States have all advanced to the second round, meaning they have at worst one of the top 16 spots in classification to assure them of a spot in the last-chance qualifier.
The Americas get two additional spots with Canada in line for one of them ahead of Mexico and Uruguay, who failed to make the World Cup.
That’s a positive, but the negative will be the low ranking Canada will come in with having failed to advance along with the other Americas teams. That likely means a very tough group awaits Canada next June.
For now, though, the focus is on ending this tournament on a positive note.
“It’s always good when there’s a little bit of light at the end of the tunnel,” Joseph said as he left the podium with a World Cup win.
We were all just kind of saying, ‘Let’s keep doing what we’re doing. We’re getting the shots we want.’