Young hoopsters beat Italians
The national Under-18 basketball team scored its fourth win in as many games yesterday at the European Championship in Pyrgos, defeating Italy 68-63. After beating Spain, Israel and Belgium in the first group stage, Greece has stormed into the second group stage, which will determine whether it can emulate last year’s success of reaching the event’s final. It now is top of the group with three wins out of three, as two of the first three count in this stage as well. The hosts trailed for most of the first half (26-29), but Italy had no answer to Greece’s young guns Leonidas Kaselakis (16 points, 11 rebounds), Constantinos Sloukas (11 pts, 11 rbs) and Zisis Sarikopoulos (17 pts, 11 rbs). Despite the absence of influential Vladimir Jankovic, who was injured in the game with Belgium and will miss the rest of the tournament, Greece is now one of the favorites to advance to the final four. This will be confirmed tonight when it faces high-flying Serbia (7 p.m.). Macijauskas to go Now that the Olympiakos basketball club is full of new stars, Lithuanian guard Arvydas Macijauskas appears to be a surplus on the squad. Hailed as the club’s Messiah two summers ago, the Lithuanian never became the player who could lead the Reds back to trophy-winning, mostly due to his being prone to injury. Now Olympiakos coach Panayiotis Yiannakis has reportedly made his plans for the new season without Macijauskas, even though the latter has a clean bill of health. He came to Athens this week and passed a series of medical tests that determined he is perfectly healthy. However, reports suggest that Olympiakos intends to release the player, after acquiring top players Theodoris Papaloukas and Josh Childress, who outshine the Lithuanian.
