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Canada 84-94 England
A comfortable enough win against Canada see's us advance into the last 16. The score-line makes this game feel as if it was really close, but in reality, apart from the second quarter, I felt we always kept Canada at arm's length and were in control. The ratings, PP100 and +/- gives further evidence that we were definitely the side in charge and perhaps we did make the game more difficult than it needed to be, but that is expected with the extra enthusiasm Canada went with.

Tactically, my defensive focus was on stopping MacKie who is an elite inside scorer. For this reason, I felt Inside Box was the defence to go with, as I was unsure whether Canada would go inside with LI/LP or try utilise MacKie's JS too for II. Our defence coped with him really well, limiting him to 14 points. Before this game he was averaging 27.7PPG this season. Offensively it was a difficult decision because our game shape was good enough to select any offence. With MacKie defending at PF for a lot of the season, I tried to seek a mismatch there with Kanjilal playing PF, but it didn't work as expected with Canada deploying a SB big to defend PF. This allowed Buchan to shine who dominated with 30 points.

Next up for us is the European powerhouse in Italy, as they cruised pass our Scottish neighbours. The likelihood of us winning this game is very little given they have more enthusiasm, home court advantage and the players they have at their disposal but let's see what happens.

Europe dominate the last 16, with 15 of the teams coming from the continent. Mexico are the only team outside of Europe, representing the Americas region. With this, the hosts for next seasons continental championships has been decided:

In Europe, the team who remain eligible are:
Germany, Czechia, Estonia, Greece, Slovenia, Hungary, Portugal, England, Netherlands, Russia and Romania.

The host of the next Americas will be Argentina. Mexico are ineligible to host the tournament.

The next host of the Asian Championships will be Philippines.

England 74-84 Italy
Despite finishing with a 7-1 record, finishing 13th meant that we would only enjoy one game at home before having to beat someone away and that team was Italy which was basically an impossible task. Not only do they have home-court advantage, they had better enthusiasm and their game shape was almost perfect. For these reasons, CT and GDP was the only option.

Once it was confirmed I got the double GDP correct and Italy went with TIE, as I expected, then maybe we could pull off the impossible. In reality, Italy were in control for the first three quarters but a late fourth quarter comeback did make it an interesting end. When Duguid scored to bring us back within 1 point with just over a minute to go, then I thought we were destined to win and pull off a big upset, but Italy showed their class to close the game out after a couple of missed three-pointers.

Overall, it's not been a bad season. We have improved on our performance two seasons ago when we lost in the first round and in turn, that has improved our rankings. We currently sit 19th and are the 11th best ranked European team, which would put us in Pot 2 for next seasons Euros, but this is obviously subject to change with further games to go.

As for the rest of the tournament, all fixtures went as expected, except for a shock result for Russia over top-seed Germany, meaning they will not host the next European Championships. This means Czechia are firmly in the driving-seat to host the tournament next season. As previously mentioned, Spain, Italy, Serbia and Israel are ineligible to host.