Image via WikipediaISTANBUL (AP)—Turkey used a 21-4 run spanning the second and third quarters on Sunday to eliminate France from the basketball world championship with a 95-77 win.
Phoenix Suns forward Hedo Turkoglu scored 20 points and Sinan Guler added 17 for Turkey, which played its first tournament game in the new Sinan Erdem Dome. A nearly capacity crowd of 15,000—including 22 members of Turkey’s national football squad sitting courtside—watched the home team make shoot 35 of 55 from the field in the round of 16 game.
Turkey’s reward is to play Slovenia on Wednesday in the quarterfinals.
“Everybody knows the fans in Turkey are loud,” France’s Boris Diaw said. The red-clad masses didn’t disappoint in this one, constantly cheering their team from before the tipoff through Guler’s layup at about three minutes left in the first half to put Turkey up 32-24.
Diaw, who plays for the Charlotte Bobcats, scored 21 points. De Colo added 15 for France, which had started strong in the preliminary round with three straight wins but fell to its group’s fourth-seeded spot after losing its last two games. Collett said he wished France could have played other teams from Turkey’s preliminary round group.
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