By Eurohoops team/ info@eurohoops.net
The Turkish national team completed the second Window of the World Cup Qualifiers with a 79- 70 defeat to Latvia in Riga that dropped them to 2-2 in Group B.
In his post-game comments, Turkey head coach Ufuk Sarica discussed the inconsistent performance his squad had in the two halves οf the match while commenting on what he saw as”unequal calls” against his frontline players.
“We can basically say that we played two completely different halves. In the first our game was great. Offense, rebounds, defense. But in the second half, we went into foul trouble with our big men getting fouled early. These calls that were made on our big guys were questionable and not necessarily equal for both teams.We couldn’t score on the steals we made.Their opponents’ physicality was strong. They ended up stronger than us. “
“One team (Latvia) makes 28 free throws and the other shoots 12 (Turkey). That seems imbalanced. I don’t think that the calls were made equally. I think this should be reviewed,” Sarica added.
“I also want to emphasize that we were missing players in our squad. We tried our best but it didn’t work. Of course, the performance of some players needs to be improved. That’s unquestionable. But I need to question this. When you play at this level and one We had only 11 players. This issue is due to the fact that we have to present our squad 24 hours before the game. A player that gets injured in practiced can’t be replaced due to this rule. I think there are some rules that need to be reviewed if we are to talk about the quality and overall performance and the improvement of the competition.”