As long as there is hope, men’s basketball players will not give up

The men’s basketball team is winless after four games in the European Championship qualifiers, after back-and-forth losses to Turkey in the November games. Ours didn’t manage to cover the paper form, even more so for Iceland, the northerners beat Italy away from home, thus pushing the Hungarian team to the brink of elimination.

“Unfortunately, we have to realize that our elimination is now very much in the cards, but now is not the time to panic. We have to concentrate on the February matches with all our nerves, as long as there is hope of getting through, we cannot give up,” said one of the best Hungarians. György Golomán to the MOL Team.

The chance was in our hands

Turkey – with two former NBA players and several Euroleague players in its squad – dealt a serious blow to the Hungarians at home, but in Szombathely they had a very good chance to win. Gasper Okorn’s team repeatedly came back from serious deficits and started the last quarter with a completely open position.

“You have to admit that they were better than us. We had our mistakes, but even if we play perfectly, the final result is questionable, because whether we look at it in terms of physicality or individual skills, our opponent was a star team.“It’s worth taking with us the fact that we improved a lot compared to the first game, we played much better in Szombathely,” said Golomán, who was our most successful player in the home game with 16 points.

“My triples fell, but it doesn’t matter much if the team loses. And that even a heroic three-pointer may not be enough, that was also revealed in the match,” said the player of San Pablo Burgos, referring to the quite frenetic solution of Ádám Hanga.

“You’re not the first one to say that when Ádi scored that triple, he felt we couldn’t lose after that. But unfortunately it didn’t happen that way.”

It’s just a mathematical chance

Iceland beat the Italians in Italy to a surprising surprise, so the Hungarian team is in an extremely difficult situation, since its participation in the European Championship is not certain even if it wins both of its games in February.

“We have to beat Iceland first, and I don’t think that will be a problem, we will beat them.“Then we go to Italy, and our situation will not be hopeless at all, because we know the Italians: if there is no stake, it often happens that they do not give everything and come out with an upset team.”

If we beat Iceland, there will be something to talk about (photo: MKOSZ)

“I watched their match on Monday, that’s exactly what happened, and Iceland jumped at the chance. We will have to do the same, we have to arrive at the selection window in February in the best possible condition from every point of view,” said Golomán.

“Gasper Okorn plays a completely different game with the team, and since we have very little time to prepare together, it was in the deck that we would not be able to immediately pick up the rhythm of the Slovenian specialist. But we’re playing better game by game, and I’m sure that if we have a chance to fight for the European Championship, we’ll take it.”