Men's Semi-finals, one from the heart!

PARIS (George Eddy's International Show) - Spain goes into a mammouth Semi-Final with Russia less dominant and serene compared to the recent past but still confident that they can battle and claw their way to victory despite the adversity.

Spain beat France with Pau Gasol scoring only ten points and Juan Carlos Navarro going 3/11 shooting.

They mixed up man and zone defences intelligently, put the stops on Tony Parker and Nicholas Batum thanks to Sergio Lull and Rudy Fernandez, and were more cool-headed down the stretch.

It was symbolic that Marc Gasol's deciding basket in the last minute came after two passes from Navarro and Pau because those three have been accumulating medals and titles for seven years together!

Both teams played fabulous defence for four quarters but Spain got to the free throw line more often and hit just a few more clutch shots. Of course, France was frustrated to see the same scenario play out once again vs. their arch-rival, coming ever so close in what Vincent Collet called the game of their lives for the Parker generation.

Collet regretted after the game not having rested Parker to start the fourth quarter because Tony didn't have 38 minutes in his legs and it showed on his last few shots which were all short. Spain's craftiness(France would translate this to flopping and complaining to the referees!) once again prevailed as they never panicked and did just enough to win.

Pau said that this difficult win came from the heart! Spain will need all this and much more against a strong, deep and balanced Russian team built around their extraordinary all-around leader Andrei Kirilenko.

Russia like Spain made just a few more decisive plays and shots than Lithuania (thank you captain Sergei Monya, who came out of nowhere in the 4th quarter)but the Russians are bigger and more physical than France whose defence is built more around quickness so Spain will have to play a completely different, more rugged type of game in the semi-final.

If France could finally come SO close to beating Spain, this might be a sign that Russia will be able to do it as they did in Madrid in the 2007 Eurobasket Final. That game came down to the last shot and this one may too!

In the other semi-final, we will finally see what Team USA is really made of because Argentina only lost to them by six during preparation and played great defence to beat Brazil.

This one should be much closer than the first round game opposing the two teams because Argentina won't try and win a shootout with USA this time.

On the contrary, they will do the opposite and slow the pace to force a low-scoring defensive struggle from the trenches as they did vs. Brazil. This is their only chance to bother Team USA who blew out Australia in the fourth quarter of their Quarter-Final.

In any case the Ginobili-Scola-Nocioni-Delfino generation can be proud of their spot in the semi-finals. After the gold in Athens and the bronze in Bejing, what a fitting finish to an incredible run!

George Eddy

FIBA

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