Vassilis Spanoulis hit a three-pointer in the final second on Sunday to give Greece an 81-78 victory over Croatia and move them closer to a quarter-final berth at the European Basketball Championship.
Jose Calderon scored 17 to lift Spain past Russia 81-69 and into the quarter-finals with the 14-time champion, and Joao Gomes scored 23 points and pulled down 11 rebounds to help Portugal past Israel 94-85.
Spain and Russia top Group E with seven points, while Greece and Croatia have six each. Israel and Portugal have five apiece.
Defending champions Greece next play Portugal, with the winner advancing to the last eight.
Croatia can also guarantee their place in the knockout stage with a win over Russia, while Israel will know before their match against world champions Spain if they are still in the running.
Marko Popovic sunk two free throws with seven seconds left to pull Croatia into a 78-78 tie with Greece, but Spanoulis dribbled the length of the court, shook off his marker then converted a wide open shot from way behind the three-point line.
Dimitrios Diamantidis, who hit several three-point field goals in the final minutes, led Greece with 23 points, while Mario Kasun led Croatia with 15.
Calderon had Spain's first seven points to start the second half and with help from Jorge Garbajosa -- who finished with 11, the Spanish hiked their lead to 66-51 early in the fourth quarter.
Russia led 23-20 after the first quarter, but Calderon and Juan Carlos Navarro led a 10-0 run to start the second period put Spain ahead for good.
Andrei Kirilenko led Russia with 21 points.
Francisco Jordao scored 20 for Portugal, which won its third straight over Israel.
Portugal capped their best first quarter of the tournament with a 28-14 lead behind 57 percent shooting, including 4-of-8 three-pointers. Israel didn't shoot too badly, but eight turnovers led to nine of Portugal's points.
With Portugal's offense delivering, the defense also picked it up.
Portugal outrebounded Israel 45-25 and held forward Yaniv Green, who came in averaging 15 points per game, to zero points with only one attempt. Green finished with two points and three rebounds.
Yesterday, Olympic runners-up Italy were to play Turkey. Also in Group F, France could clinch their place in the last eight with a win over unbeaten Lithuania, who are already through along with Slovenia, who play Germany.
Revelations of positive doping tests for nearly two dozen Chinese swimmers that went unpunished sparked an intense flurry of accusations and legal threats between the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and the head of the US drug-fighting organization, who has long been one of WADA’s fiercest critics. WADA on Saturday said it was turning to legal counsel to address a statement released by US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) CEO Travis Tygart, who said WADA and anti-doping authorities in China swept positive tests “under the carpet by failing to fairly and evenly follow the global rules that apply to everyone else in the world.” The
Taiwanese judoka Yang Yung-wei on Saturday won silver in the men’s under-60kg category at the Asian Judo Championships in Hong Kong. Nicknamed the “judo heartthrob” in Taiwan, the Olympic silver-medalist missed out on his first Asian Championships gold when he lost to Japanese judoka Taiki Nakamura in the finals. Yang defeated three opponents on Saturday to reach the final after receiving a bye through the round of 32. He first topped Laotian Soukphaxay Sithisane in the round of 16 with two seoi nage (over-the-shoulder throws), then ousted Indian Vijay Kumar Yadav in the quarter-finals with his signature ude hishigi sankaku gatame (triangular armlock). He
RALLY: It was only the second time the Taiwanese has partnered with Kudermetova, and the match seemed tight until they won seven points in a row to take the last set 10-2 Taiwan’s Chan Hao-ching and Russia’s Veronika Kudermetova on Sunday won the Porsche Tennis Grand Prix women’s doubles final in Stuttgart, Germany. The pair defeated Norway’s Ulrikke Eikeri and Estonia’s Ingrid Neel 4-6, 6-3, 10-2 in a tightly contested match at the WTA 500 tournament. Chan and Kudermetova fell 4-6 in the first set after having their serve broken three times, although they played increasingly well. They fought back in the second set and managed to break their opponents’ serve in the eighth game to triumph 6-3. In the tiebreaker, Chan and Kudermetova took a 3-0 lead before their opponents clawed back two points, but
Taiwanese gymnast Lee Chih-kai failed to secure an Olympic berth in the pommel horse following a second-place finish at the last qualifier in Doha on Friday, a performance that Lee and his coach called “unconvincing.” The Tokyo Olympics silver medalist finished runner-up in the final after scoring 6.6 for degree of difficulty and 8.800 for execution for a combined score of 15.400. That was just 0.100 short of Jordan’s Ahmad Abu Al Soud, who had qualified for the event in Paris before the Apparatus World Cup series in Qatar’s capital. After missing the final rounds in the first two of four qualifier