Susijengi will play its first game in the follow-up series of the World Championships on Thursday. Opposite is Cape Verde. The match starts at 10:30 Finnish time. follows the events in this article.
OKINAWA.
Susijeng’s first group of the World Championships ended with three losses after poor performances. The team has received crushing criticism. Of course, complete success would have been required to topple World Cup medal favorites Germany and Australia, but after the meltdown seen against Japan, Susijeng’s problems have surfaced even more.
Three losses would probably be easier for basketball fans to accept if the losses had come after hard battles and good games. However, such have not been seen.
On the contrary, Susijengi has looked really discouraged at worst. The situation has even seemed unreal to the fans of the Okinawa arena. Certainly because the playing has been far from what the Finnish basketball team is used to seeing.
On Tuesday against Germany, Finland was still within striking distance going into the halftime break, but then there were a lot of losses. On the defensive end, Susijengi could not control Germany’s attacking play. The players’ heads turned down. Germany went ahead. The excerpts looked exactly as they have looked almost the entire summer.
The performances show that Susijengi is not united on the field. Unity has been exactly the strength with which Susijengi has taken tough scalps over the years.
The wolf gang’s situation is marked by a big contradiction. This year’s World Cup team has been considered the best of all time in terms of material in several evaluations. Of course, the 2017 European Championship team has been raised alongside, but this year’s team has been drawn to the side of the horizontal cup by, among other things, its athleticism.
For example, a value competition first-timer Olivier Nkamhouan basket protection and impressive saves are something that has not been seen from a player of the Finnish men’s national basketball team for a long time.
However, the result has been far from the best possible.
So what is the reason for the discrepancy between the player material and the results?
The easiest explanation would be experience. Two national team legends, who have seen Susijeng’s rise to the European elite, ended their careers at last summer’s European Championships, Shawn Huff and Petteri Koponen. Their importance should not be underestimated. The potential of the current team has not been realized yet.
Another easy explanation is the level of playmakers in Susijeng’s national team compared to other countries. At this venue, Finland was clearly the underdog against, for example, Australia and Germany. The Japanese back players were also in ecstasy on the same level as the Finns. However, the role of the playmaker is still to get the games started and to stabilize the play when it is more difficult.
A third easy explanation is that Lauri Markkanen hasn’t been hit as hard as a year ago at the European Championships. Of course, this is affected by the problems of the team’s attacking end, but one could imagine that conscript service and a different summer played a part in the matter.
Three details that might make a big difference?
Then there are details that affect unity, the importance of which is more difficult to verify. However, these small things can play a big role. One of them is language on and off the field.
In last year’s European Championships, Susijeng only had a Finnish-speaking team. Now the team’s language has changed back to English, as in many prestigious competitions in the 2010s, when this year’s World Cup team was selected Jacob Grandison and Alex Murphy. Huff pondered In the middle of invention podcastthat in basketball with short reaction times, the language issue can affect defense, for example.
By speaking a language unknown to the world like Finnish, you can also get a small competitive advantage.
Huff also talked about the fact that even in unity there can be nuanced differences.
– I don’t buy that this World Cup team is not united. Some Finnish teams have just been too uniform. In last year’s European Championship, there were moments that I had not been part of before in my entire career. For example, all 12 players of the team went somewhere together (to hang out), Huff recalled after the Japan match about the point of comparison a year ago.
Another detail is the preparatory international matches. Susigengi played four of them this year and all in Europe. Many World Cup teams played even closer to the competition venues in Asian preparatory games.
The question arises, would the young and inexperienced Susijengi have needed more games before the World Cup?
The third detail that became public was that each Finnish player stays in their own room and not in pairs.
– Here we learn the system of the World Cup and how things work in the big boys’ world compared to some other tournaments. I don’t think that the situation would be resolved by this matter alone. Yes, we spend a lot of time together during the month. There are different events and stuff. Yes, this starts from training and how we do things the next day to win the next game, head coach Lassi Tuovi stated to Urheilu after the game against Germany.
In any case, for Susijeng, who needs a lot of shared experiences, the last two World Cup games may be even more meaningful than they can think of at the moment.
One thing is, of course, that by grabbing the Olympic qualifying spot, Finland would get meaningful games for next summer. However, the Olympic qualifiers are different from normal country matches.
The World Championships in Okinawa may also leave quite a mental dent if Finland’s grip continues as seen now for the rest of the week. At worst, weak competitions can leave a big mark on the future of a young team.
Thinking positively, of course, the same thing: This new generation can draw strength from these two weeks, if the direction turns and there are wins. All in all, great learning experiences.
Susijengi will play its first game in the follow-up series of the World Cup on Thursday. Opposite is Cape Verde. The match starts at 10:30 Finnish time. The second game of the continuation series is scheduled for Susijengi on Saturday also from 10:30 Finnish time.