Georgia dominated from the opening jump, outplayed Spain in rebounding and took advantage of the inexperience of the point guards, poor shooting and a worrying lack of aggressiveness in defence to claim the surprise win.
I would like to criticise the organisers for taking EuroBasket to venues where they seem to care little about basketball. Apart from friends and family of both teams, there were few others in the stands of the Spyros Kyprianou Arena in Limassol (Cyprus).
What they saw from the start was a Spain that was very erratic in three-pointers, free throws and penetration, and also in defence, where Georgian blocks rained down. With that and the losses, the tournament opener could not have been more negative for the holders.
After five minutes, they were already 13-6 down. Not even a call to order by coach Sergio Scariolo prevented the gap from widening to 10, with Sandro Mamukelashvili and Kamar Baldwin scoring 14 points between them. The introduction of Saint-Supery and Jaime Pradilla helped minimise the damage, and it was 20-17 at the end of the quarter.
Spain came to equalise on a couple of occasions in the second thanks to the good work under the boards of Willy Hernangomez, but the lack of outside success prevented them from taking the lead until a minute before the break (32-33).
The Georgian reaction, with Duda Sanadze and Goga Bitadze taking over the scoring duties, was to go on a run that left them ahead despite Dario Brizuela's basket at the buzzer (37-35) to close out the half.
Improving their three-point percentage (4/14), closing the rebounding and not losing silly balls were the aspects that Scariolo had to focus on in the locker room.
But La Familia returned to the same old ways on their return to the parquet. Or even worse. It took them a while to wake up, and with the tactic of rebounding and running, they were able to get back into the game (46-44 at 24').
However, irregularity seems to be a part of this Spanish team, whose players resigned in defence and gave up looking at the opposing hoop. Georgia took advantage of this and in one minute went on a 7-0 run that again complicated the situation until the final quarter at 57-49 with Spain powerless to score points.
Many things had to be corrected if they wanted to counteract Tornike Shengelia, Mamukelashvili and company, who ran away with 10 points. The scoring awakening of Juancho Hernangomez and a more aggressive defence reduced the difference by half.
Once again, the lack of continuity penalised Scariolo's team, overpowered in rebounding and failing to the best of their ability even in free throws (below 50%). He resorted to Brizuela as a point guard to try to fix the mental block his players were suffering, but with no luck (75-60, at 37'). The Spanish went on to lose by 14 points (83-69).
Match MVPs
Mamukelashvili, with 19 points, was the top scorer for Georgia, who had four other players in double figures.
For Spain, it was Juancho, with 13, who was the most accurate, or the least erratic, after the team put up a sad 7/32 in three-pointers and a shocking 6/13 from free throws.