Spain took advantage of a rare occurrence to defeat Turkey 81-59 in the opening quarter-final round game of the UMCOR U18 European Championship Men in Amaliada, Greece.

Moments before the game began, Turkey's Mesut Arif Cipa dunked the ball in pre-game warm-ups and caused the backboard to break and thus the start of the game was delayed 50.

		Javier Forcada of Spain fends off Turkey's Ogon Sevinc in attempting to score.

Spain continued their warm-ups while Turkey looked on as their backboard was being prepared.

When the game did start, Spain jumped out to an 11-0 lead and never looked back en route to the easy victory.

“I think they key was that we were more concentrated and ready play after the situation with the backboard,” said Spain’s Pablo Aguilar, who finished the game with 26 points.

“On two occasions in our preparation games, we had a situation where there were delays in the game,” explained Spanish coach Luis Guil.

“So we were ready for this type of situation.”

“I can’t use that as an excuse,” said Turkey head coach Orhun Ene.

“They played well and served to win and we were not very good today.”

Turkey did cut the Spanish deficit to four points to start the third quarter, but Spain answered with seven straight and outscored Turkey 18-6 over a six minute span to take a commanding double-digit lead.

“They pressed us and our mentality was to attack the basket and score off of the press,” said Guil.

Spain led by as much as 27 in the fourth quarter as many of Guil’s starters concluded the game resting on the bench.

Joaquin Colom scored 18 points for the Spanish and Victor Claver added 15.