Group B

France escaped the Classification Round with a 57-42 victory over Sweden in Group B of the OMNITEL U18 European Championship at the Siemens Arena in Vilnius, Lithuania on Saturday night.

The win lift France to a 1-2 record, enough for the 3rd spot in the group, while Sweden will seek their debut Division A win while trying to avoid relegation back to the lower division after one year.

Viktor Gaddefors and Sweden had to endure another terrible night on offence

Despite the big difference in the final buzzer, the game was much more intense.

France used a 9-0 run inside the last three minutes, to surrender their rival and extend the gap until the siren.

Until then the fans witnessed a tough battle between two teams fighting for survival, resulting a slow paced and harsh style of basketball.

Rudy Gobert enjoyed another great game with 14 points, 16 rebounds and 3 blocks against the shorter Swedish line-up. Mathis Keita added 11 points.

The losing side saw only Jonathan Person in double-digits with 12 points and suffered a bad shooting day connecting only 16 shots in 70 attempts to write a tournament low of 42 points.

The first minutes exampled the story of the game, as both sides found a difficulty to score, but Sweden was strong in the race with a 10-12 lead after one period.

The next 3 minutes saw only 2 points scored by each side, while Sweden failed to score in the closing 3:21 minutes of the 1st half, and entered the locker room down 23-18.

Person stepped up for Sweden but Gobert was too much to handle under the rim, and France remained on top.

Keita connected for 4 points in a row to create a 38-31, and added a big three pointer in the first bucket of the last quarter to push the gap to 10.

Person answered with the same coin and later added another combination of 3 points to make it just a 43-37 game with 3:12 to play, but Gobert with a tip-in and Thomas Ceci with a corner three pointer ignited the 9-0 run that put Sweden out of reach, and saved France from the last spot in the group.