Shane Larkin leads Turkey to a comfortable win over Great Britain / News - Basketnews.com

Credit: FIBA Credit FIBA

Shane Larkin was the top scorer on the Turkish national team (2-2) to lead the team past Great Britain (1-3) in the 2023 FIBA World Cup Qualifiers 85-71 (20-18, 22-13, 20-20, 20-23).

Great Britain / Schedule

Greece Great Britain93-71 Great Britain Turkey71-85

The Anadolu Efes Istanbul star guard scored 22 points on 6-for-10 shooting, dished out 6 assists, grabbed 3 rebounds, and collected 22 PIR points.

Turkey opened up the game with a 13-3 run and forced their opponents to take a quick timeout. After the breather, Great Britain went on a little 8-0 run on their own to pull the game within 2 (11-13).

The teams battled back and forth in the first 10 minutes of the match but the second quarter belonged to Turkey. Although the home team even led the game for a brief moment, the Larkin-led squad went on a 20-6 run to close out the half (42-31).

Although Great Britain tried to fight back multiple times throughout the second half, their efforts were fruitless in most cases.

The underdogs pulled within 8 points with 7 minutes to go in the 4th quarter after Myles Hesson's three-pointer, but it was all the team could offer against a more talented and better organized Turkey.

Turkey controlled the rest of the quarter and took a comfortable win to finish the first round of FIBA World Cup Qualifiers in 2nd place in Group B. As Belarus was eliminated from the group following Russia's invasion of Ukraine, all three teams of the group qualified for the next stage of the Qualifiers.

Great Britain: Myles Hesson 18 (2/8 2PT, 3/7 3PT, 5/6 FT, 10 REB, 5 AST, 3 TO, 20 PIR), Kavell Bigby-Williams 12 (5/6 2PT, 3 REB), Devon Van Oostrum 12 (3/7 3PT, 3 REB, 5 AST), Patrick Whelan 11 (4/5 2PT, 4 REB, 3 AST).

Turkey: Shane Larkin 22 (3/4 2PT, 3/6 3PT, 7/8 FT, 3 REB, 6 AST, 4 TO, 22 PIR), Sehmus Hazer 11 (3/3 2PT, 5 REB, 6 AST), Melih Mahmutoglu 10 (2/6 3PT).

Support BasketNews so we could make even better content.