U16 Belgian Lions miss out on promotion

At the U16 European Championship (Division B) our U16 Belgian Lions narrowly missed out on the final spot to promote to Division A next year as they go down to Switzerland (75-80).

After a convincing win in the Quarter-Finals against The Netherlands, things were looking very bright for our U16 Lions who had gathered a 5-0 record in the tournament at that point. Unfortunately things turned around quickly in the Semi-Finals when they came up against a very energetic and aggressive Estonia. From the start our youngsters struggled to make a basket. Luckily, Estonia wasn’t doing all that much better on the offensive end and at the half everything was still up for grabs (27-28).

Then came the second half however, in which our boys were completely blown away. They couldn’t buy a bucket against the tough Estonian defense and were completely dominated on the boards as they eventually went down 46-67 and had to content with a spot in the 3rd Place game against Switzerland for their last chance to capture a promotion.

In that 3rd Place game against Switzerland, Belgium started out pretty solid and were in the lead after the opening quarter. Then their offensive woes surfaced again with low shooting percentages as a result and at the half they were looking at a 10 point deficit (33-43). They fought back though and carried by a sublime Aaron Ona Embo (35 points) they managed to get back into the game and even take the lead (69-67) on a And1-play by Christian Elocobe with 4:20 minutes left in the game. Switzerland reacted strong and answered every play from Belgium in kind, making it a 75-76 game with 1 minute left. Belgium’s 23rd turnover of the game then gave Switzerland the chance to pull further away as Belgium ran out of steam. Final score: 75-80.

Despite losing out on the promotion our youngsters can look back at a solid tournament in which they put together a 5-2 record for the 4th Place in the final standings.

It’s been an especially strong tournament by our Guard Aaron Ona Embo who finished with averages of 18.9 ppg, 3.6 rpg, 4.7 apg & 2.3 spg. On many occasions he almost single-handedly had to carry our team. It’s still too early to know (as the Final game still needs to be played), but I’m pretty sure he will be among the tournament’s Starting Five. Christian Elocobe was our second best performer at the tournament with averages of 8.9 ppg, 3.7 rpg, 1.4 apg & 2.0 spg, while big man Tim Waerniers also had a solid tournament as he recorded 8.8 ppg, 5.0 rpg & 2.2 apg.