Euro Basket 2011 Qualifiers begin next week

[Prolet]

Onur, Port Rico got hammered by Ivory Coast either way Turkey,Lithuania and USA go through with 5 wins.

The biggest shock was to see Serbia beat Argentina who are number 1 in the world, Russia is also a top side who play attractive Basketball.

[Onur]

LOL, We crushed France, totally!!!

Turkey 95 -/- 77 France


We were leading 29 points at the beginning of 3rd quarter and we played with substitute players in the 4th


Now Slovenia next for the quarter finals...

[Prolet]

I cant believe how good Slovenia played, they literally killed Australia didnt give them anything. Turkey is playing brilliant at home, Turkolou fired up in the right time i saw the highlights on Fifa TV they played very well.

Its funny how Beko is the major sponsor, in Skopje there is a police station called Beko so it confuses me.

So its Turkey-Slovenija and Serbia-Spain wow thats going to be very good i think Lithuania and USA will make the 1/4 finals too, although Brazil and Argentina are very good.

http://www.fibatv.com/page/Video/0,,12805~1642405,00.html?tabb=highlights&pnumber=1

[Prolet]

Brate, Here is something interesting

Pece Naumoski along side Jane Petrovski,Dzole Kochov,Sinisa Avramovski,Toni Grncharov,Igor Penov and Kiril Nikolovski signed for MZT Skopje.

http://www.a1.com.mk/vesti/video-player.asp?Video=10%2Fvlatko%2Dmzt%2D06%2D09%2Ewmv&VestID=127123

[Onur]

We crushed Slovenia too!!!! off to the semi finals without a lose single game

Turkey 95 - 68 Slovenia


We were leading the game by 20 points as early as the middle of 2nd quarter and it never dropped below 20 points `till the end.

Serbia is next...

[freifrau]

We crushed Slovenia too!!!! off to the semi finals without a lose single game

Turkey 95 - 68 Slovenia


We were leading the game by 20 points as early as the middle of 2nd quarter and it never dropped below 20 points `till the end.

Serbia is next...

I love Bregovic and i love Istanbul too ...hm..difficult to choose side !

[Prolet]

The way Turkey is playing at the moment i cant see anybody beating them, they absolutely thrashed France earlier.

Serbia has won a few very tough games against Croatia and Spain, its going to be very tough to beat them. Either way i just dont want to see USA win it, i hope somebody like Argentina can knock them out.

http://www.fibatv.com/page/Video/0,,12805~1646985,00.html?tabb=highlights&pnumber=1

[Onur]

The way Turkey is playing at the moment i cant see anybody beating them, they absolutely thrashed France earlier.

Serbia has won a few very tough games against Croatia and Spain, its going to be very tough to beat them. Either way i just dont want to see USA win it, i hope somebody like Argentina can knock them out.

Turkey`s defense is superb. It looks like unbreakable. I believe if we play like that, we can beat Serbia too and reach the finals but Serbia is a very good team too, so it will be tough game. Our bench is also awesome, everyone contributes the game.

I am so excited for saturday. I think it will be very good game to watch, Turkey vs. Serbia.

[Bratot]

It's the turkish fighting spirit decidable.

That's how I would like to see our guys playing in any sports.

[Prolet]

They are playing how any host side should be, with the crowd on their side they are certainly favorites.

[Onur]

They are playing how any host side should be, with the crowd on their side they are certainly favorites.

An article posted on ESPN NBA web site about our crowd few days ago;

Why don't NBA fans sing?

Did you read Chris Sheridan's TrueHoop post about the crowd in Turkey?;

A crowd of 15,500 sang in unison, belting out the theme song of the Turkish national team -- "12 Giant Men" -- beginning at the end of the third quarter and continuing right on into the start of the fourth as the host team at the FIBA World Championship moved into the quarterfinals by handling France with ease, 95-77 behind 20 points from Hedo Turkoglu.

Their decibel level did not even drop when Nicolas Batum was opening the final period with consecutive dunks, for everyone knew they wouldn't matter in a game that was all but over just a couple minutes into the third quarter.

"I got the shivers," said guard Sinan Guler, who shot 8-for-10 from the field and scored 17 points in a game the Turks led by as many as 28. "Any time I hear the songs that they start singing I get excited, and I'm definitely one of the players that feed off that energy, and I know our team feeds off and plays a lot better with that energy that the fans give us."


I guess a bunch of fans singing out of joy and pride is generally seen as something cute or nifty. (Those crazy Turks! They do all these wonderful things! And you should try the baklava!)

But that's not how I see it. I see people in those stands who know something we don't about how to make sports a fantastic experience. They sing at sporting events in much of the world. Honestly... why do we essentially never sing at NBA games?

And it's not that I'm some nutty advocate of opera or whatever. More than anything, I guess my point is that a lot of what matters about going to see a sporting event is the experience of being in a crowd. And that experience, at an NBA game, is fun, but a fraction of what it could be. These days you can count on some super rich dude who insists he has every right to scream obscenities at players he does not know. You can count on seeing people who have had plastic surgery and botox. You can count on people in suits who are texting much of the night. And you can count on the reality that crowd will not burst into song.

You're still way better off going to the game than watching it on TV, if you seek the full sports experience. But imagine if buying a ticket meant getting to be a part of something really special. When 15,500 people sing together, out of love, there's just no way around the fact that you're having a unique experience. Some of those people will cry when the they tell the story of being at that game, and that's a good thing!

I don't know if we're too macho, if the people who can afford NBA tickets are too stuffy or if there's some other reason. But I can tell you that even though we have a limitless supply of passion for sports in the U.S. but we simply do not know how to unleash the kind of ecstatic crowd that was present for Turkey's dismantling of France. And that's too bad.

In the NBA, we have figured out how to run a sport where we can afford to pay two billion a year or so in player salaries. That matters! Good for us! That's why the best basketball in the world is played in the NBA. However, that doesn't mean we do everything perfectly, and it sure would be fun if we could pick up the trick of having truly passionate fans.


http://espn.go.com/blog/truehoop/pos...-nba-fans-sing

Actually this kind of support is present in most major sport competition in Europe, especially in football games but ofc USA does not used to this but i gotta give special credit to our crowd cuz they really manage to uplift our players while disturbing the opponents

[Onur]

Turkey is in the final !!!!!!!!


We beat Serbia by 83 - 82. It was a very close game since the start. Serbs was always leading the game but we never let them widen the gap more than 7 points. We started the 4th quarter 2 points behind the Serbs and beat them with just one basket at the last 4 sec of the game Our players played with %100 cuz Serbs was playing near perfect during whole game but our will to win the game was insane and it was the biggest factor which leaded us to reach the final. I thought i was going to have an heart attack during whole last quarter, hehe

The final will be Turkey vs. USA, Sunday 19.30 GMT

[Onur]

Thats pathetic but it looks like Turkey`s victory caused an havoc in Kosovo;

Turkey's victory over Serbia sparks Kosovo clash

Ethnic Albanians and Serbs clashed in Kosovo's ethnically divided city of Mitrovica after Turkey defeated Serbia in the semifinals of the basketball world championship, police said Saturday.

Police spokesman Besim Hoti said ethnic Albanians and Serbs pelted each other with stones Saturday when "Albanians started celebrating Turkey's victory."

An Associated Press reporter heard gunshots and said police used tear gas to disperse the crowds surging toward the bridge that divides the city into the majority ethnic Albanian and minority Serb parts.

Doctors in the Serb-run north said a Serb youth was shot and wounded.

Hoti could not confirm the reports, but said European Union police and NATO peacekeepers were called in to secure the bridge.


http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/n.p...ash-2010-09-12

[Soldier of Macedon]

Albanians in Kosovo are an interesting bunch. They force Turks to declare as Albanians in Kosovo yet celebrate Turkey's victory over Serbia because of their animosity towards the latter.

Perhaps the below had something to do with increasing tensions:

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5hKrGLWvwpXEK7apQAUidVkkbVL8QD9I5N4A80

Serbia charges 9 ex-troops with Kosovo war crimes

BELGRADE, Serbia — Serbia's war crimes prosecutor has charged nine former paramilitary fighters with war crimes for the brutal killing of more than 40 civilians during the war in Kosovo, the prosecutor's office said Saturday.

The nine are accused of murder, looting, rape, intimidation and destruction of property of ethnic Albanian civilians in the western Kosovo village of Cuska in May 1999, the statement said.

The purpose of the crimes was to drive the ethnic Albanians from their homes, it added.

The indictment against the nine, all former members of the Sakali, or Jackals, paramilitary unit, is part of pro-Western Serbian government efforts to deal with the wartime past as it seeks EU membership.

The atrocities committed in Cuska and the surrounding villages are among the worst from Kosovo's 1998-99 war. Altogether, around 10,000 people, mostly ethnic Albanians, were killed during the conflict.

The indictment for Cuska crimes says that "the accused have shown particular brutality, ruthlessness and insensitivity," the prosecutor's statement said.

It added that the accused intimidated the civilians by snatching small children away from them, shooting in front of their feet, putting knives at their throats or beating them.

The murders were committed in a brutal way, often by firing multiple rounds into the victims' backs, the indictment said. The bodies were burned to prevent identification, it added.

Serbian prosecutors have initially opened an investigation against 26 people for the crimes committed in western Kosovo in 1999.

The brutality of Serbia's crackdown in Kosovo had prompted NATO to bomb the country to end the war. Then-President Slobodan Milosevic and several top wartime state officials and security officers were tried for Kosovo war crimes at the U.N. tribunal in The Hague, Netherlands. Milosevic died in 2006 before his genocide trial ended.

Kosovo declared independence in 2008.

[Prolet]

Albanians probably provoked them it was a very close match indeed, Turkey deserved to win after being down for most of the game.

Onur, Too many free throws missed but a good fighting spirit. Serbia had too many close games and didnt deserve to go through, they should have pulled away in the third quarter but they didnt and thats that.

Onur, That centar should have shot the free throws, and with 0.5 seconds when that Turkish player booted the basketball into the stands is a technical foul, its one of the closest ever games i've seen in basketball. Turkey won but were very lucky to win, i thought Iliyasova was very ordinary today, if he played like he did against Argentina it would have been a different ball game.

Im going to be cheering Turkey on and hope they beat USA, its their destiny to win it especially after last nights win.

Onur, Whats your opinion of Turkish head coach Bogdan Tanjevic?