HAMBURG, Germany – The Canadian men’s wheelchair basketball team’s medal hopes were dashed on Tuesday in a 79-68 loss to Poland in crossover play at the 2018 World Wheelchair Basketball Championships.
Poland now advances to the quarter-finals while Canada, hoping to rebound from an 11th-place finish at the 2016 Paralympic Games, is relegated to a placement game.
‘’It’s a bitter pill to swallow, but we have two years to Tokyo (2020 Paralympic Games),’’ said Patrick Anderson of Fergus, Ont., who scored 19 points and added 11 rebounds. ‘’This was our chance to re-establish ourselves as a contender and we didn’t do that.’’
Poland aggressively attacked the basket with speed, precision shooting from the outside and a commanding presence in the key, shooting 61 per cent from the field. Despite a solid effort by the Canucks on both sides of the ball, they simply had no answer to slow the Polish offence enough to close the gap on the scoreboard.
“They are a good team and they shot very, very well and exploited their height advantage over us,” said Anderson. “We put enough points on the board to win, but defensively we couldn’t get the stops and that’s sort of been our story here.’’
Nik Goncin of Regina was Canada’s top scorer with 25 points and Bo Hedges of Fort St. John, B.C. added 10.
Canadian women fall to Netherlands
On the women’s side, Canada dropped a 64-52 decision to the Netherlands in pool play. Canada sits third in pool A with a 2-2 record with one game remaining. The top four finishers in each of the two pools advance to the quarter-finals.
Arinn Young (Legal, Alta.) was the top point producer for Canada with 21 points, closely followed by Cindy Ouellet (Quebec City) with 18 points.
“It’s frustrating to come out hot and lose, but you have to keep your composure the whole game,” said Young. “I think there were times when we both had mini runs back and forth, but we know what we have to clean up and that’s our defence and that’s what we’re looking forward to doing in the game tomorrow.”
The Canadian women play their final round-robin game on Wednesday at 4 a.m. ET against Brazil (0-4).
Canada’s games will be livestreamed at Facebook.com/CDNParalympics, Facebook.com/wheelchairbasketball, cbcsports.ca and via the CBC Sports app
Team Canada information: http://www.wheelchairbasketball.ca/event/2018-world-wheelchair-basketball-championships/
Official website: https://iwbf.org/event/2018-world-championships/
