Supersonic Spain Demolish Turkey

Spain couldn't have asked for a better start in the U20 European Championship Men after smashing Turkey 90-41 in the last game of Day 1.

Despite the big gap, it's still worth just one win in the standings, as Spain take a 1-0 record in Group C tied with Greece, while Turkey dropped to 0-1.

The hosts dominated the game from the start and held a double-digit lead already in the first quarter, and turned the game into a landslide in the third.

Joan Sastre led the scoring sheet of Spain with 16 pints and added 6 rebounds to go with it. NIkola Mirotic added 15 points, Josep Franch had 13, Jose Simeon scored 8.

Huseyin Koksal was the only player in Turkey to reach double-digits with 10 points, while Furkan Aldemir had 6 points and 11 rebounds, including 7 on offense.

"The most important thing for us is that every player that goes on the court will give 100%, and that's why we never stopped to push for a bigger and bigger gap," said Juan Antonio Orenga, head coach of Spain.

That approach was perfectly exampled when in the last second of the game one of the Spanish players didn't take an open shot he had, with the teams separated by 49 points, and got to hear his coach shout at him to shoot.

"Of course this is an unusual thing for us to lose like this," admitted head coach Mustafa Derin of Turkey.

"Maybe we were two focused on the games against Greece and Austria and that allowed them to keep increasing the gap.

"We had some problems in the rotation, but I don't think this is the gap between the teams.

"I'm sure that tomorrow people will already see the real Turkish team and we'll get better and better in every game."

Spain gave Turkey no more than 5 minutes of mercy, and from a 12-10 lead ignited a run that went into the 2nd quarter with 14 points in a row.

No less than 5 Spanish players contributed to that run, that was the first glance of the domination Spain will enjoy tonight and the great contribution from a long list of players.

Furkan Aldemir was active around the rim on both ends and helped Turkey return to just 28-18 but Sastre and Franch scored back to back three pointers to push the teams to a 39-20 score at the break.

If Turkey had any plans to make things better came the third quarter and pictured a complete opposite scenario.

The duo Sastre and Franch once again showed how lethal they can be and made it a 50-22 game after 3 minuets in the third, but Spain wasn't done.

Mirotic returned to the floor and Simeon had his say as well as the gap jumped over to 40 after 30 minutes, 67-27.

After scoring only 27 points in three quarters Turkey finally started to connect better, but still stayed far behind.

Every player that came off the Spanish bench created damage for the opponent and the gap continued to increase until the final buzzer.

"I don't think this is the real difference between the teams," admitted Orenga.

"We had a great momentum and they lost any momentum once the gap became big so this why the final score tells the story of the game but not the differences between the teams.

"We actually lost to Turkey in a preparation game two weeks ago, and maybe that helped us. My assistants did a great scouting job to prepare our players to the game.

Tomorrow Spain will take on Greece in hope to remain perfect, while Turkey search for their first victory when they take on Austria.