Greek, Croatian basketball teams qualify for Beijing
ATHENS (Reuters) - Greece and Croatia booked their places at the Beijing Olympic Games after winning Saturday's semi-finals in the men's basketball qualifying tournament.
Croatia secured their spot with a tight 76-70 win over favorites Germany while the hosts had a smoother passage, beating Puerto Rico 88-63.
The two losers will meet in a playoff on Sunday to see who takes the 12th and final place in Beijing.
Germany's defeat by Croatia came in spite of a superb individual performance from Dallas Mavericks' power forward Dirk Nowitzki, who notched up 30 points and claimed 13 defensive rebounds.
Led by Marko Tomas who scored 21 points, the 20th-ranked Croatians showed how much their game has improved over the last week.
"We weren't a good team before this tournament but we stepped up and proved that we could play good basketball," said guard Marko Popovic.
The Germans trailed for most of the game, nudging ahead only briefly two minutes before the end of the third quarter.
A crucial Davor Kus three-pointer with just over three and a half minutes left to play gave Croatia a 10-point cushion and they held on despite a late fight-back by the Germans.
Greece's performance against Puerto Rico will merely strengthen the view that they are genuine medal contenders.
"We are not going to the Olympics for a holiday," said power forward Antonis Fotsis.
"We want to go for something good and we will fight in every game."
Setting a frantic pace in front of a fiery 12,000 home crowd, Greece made short work of Puerto Rico, racing to a 15-4 lead in less than five minutes and never looking back.
Greece centre Sofoklis Schortsianitis was outstanding in keeping the towering Puerto Rican duo of Peter John Ramos and Daniel Santiago at bay while also scoring 13 points. Puerto Rico's Jose Juan Barea was the game's top scorer with 16.
Angola, Argentina, Australia, China, Iran, Lithuania, Russia, Spain and the United States had already qualified.
(Additional reporting by Karolos Grohmann, editing by Rex Gowar)
(For more stories visit our multimedia website "Road to Beijing" here; and see our blog at blogs.reuters.com/china)
