Orhun Ene: We didn’t play well enough to win

Our National Men’s Basketball Team lost 76-67 against Greece in the fourth match of the FIBA ​​2023 World Cup Qualification Group B at Istanbul Sinan Erdem Sports Hall. After the fight, National Team Head Coach Orhun Ene made evaluations.

Orhun Ene stated that according to the statements on the website of the Turkish Basketball Federation, everything on the court did not go as they wanted, and that they did not play well enough to win.

Orhun Ene’s explanations are as follows:

“First of all, we all wanted to win. Of course, everything on the field did not go as we wanted. This saddened us a lot. We deserved to win the first game more. Today, I must admit, we didn’t play well enough to win. If we hadn’t missed those easy shots at the beginning of the match, the game would have turned into a different atmosphere. “Unfortunately, we had a downturn there and this downfall was reflected in the results of the first half and third quarter. We don’t hide behind excuses. I don’t want anyone to think that way either. First of all, we will face the defeat, then our player friends. There can be ups and downs in these processes. Everyone needs to play as they want in these competitions.” It’s not easy. Shane Larkin and Melih Mahmutoğlu, who played 3 matches in the Turkish Cup, physically fell at the end of the game when they played Euroleague and two matches against Greece. This happened to us in our first match as well. Maybe we didn’t have the chance to talk about it there, but in the last 1 minute of that match He didn’t have time to play. it would certainly be beneficial for us as a decision maker. We lost an unlucky match. We made the wrong choice. Here again we made a similar response. In the period when we reduce the difference, we see that we are behind physically. As a result, we cannot find easy numbers. We fired 3 free throws today. At the end of the match, we made 3-4 turnovers because we were tired. We’re a slightly more inexperienced team around here. We had players like Alperen and Sertaç in the windows we played last year. Shahmus was not there today. Maybe his energy would help us. We had better chemistry with these guys. We have new friends playing. We need to recover by playing better every day. After the game we played in Athens, this match had to be better. Sorry for our audience. But we showed the concentration and energy we could. But these are not enough. He scored 40 points in two long 35 minutes against us today. We have to evolve further to get there. We are not in a position to play both games at the same level. We have to accept this fact as well.”