Already qualified for the Euros, the French women’s basketball team concluded its qualifying phase with a big victory in Finland, with a score of 46-82, including a third quarter of play.
Five out of six for the Blues! The French women’s team will have fallen only once during the qualifying campaign for Euro 2023, in Ukraine in November 2021. This Sunday, the daughters of Jean-Aimé Toupane, qualified since Thursday evening and the victory in Lithuania, were playing their last Group B match in Finland, and they won easily, with a score of 46-82. At Urheahalli, the French were not always perfect, but they were sufficiently superior to their opponents to win with a very wide gap. It was the first and third quarters in particular that made the difference in favor of the Olympic bronze medalists: 20-6 then 30-4!
Williams and Ciak wear the Blues
France started the match with a bang, in the wake of their star Gabby Williams (9pts in the first half). But the Finns came back a bit afterwards, taking advantage of the twelve balls lost by the Blues in the first quarter, including four for Valériane Vukosavljevic alone. But on the restart, the French knocked out the Finns, to go from 26-37 to 30-67 in the space of a quarter.. The victory being already in the pocket, the Bleues loosened the noose in the last quarter and Jean-Aimé Toupane opened his bench, his twelve players finishing with at least ten minutes of play each. Despite a total of 22 stray bullets and a fairly average three-point percentage (38%), the Blues offered themselves a comfortable victory, thanks in particular to 18 points from Williams and 12 from Helena Ciak. This is therefore a convincing success four months before the Euro in Israel and Slovenia, where the Blue will aim for a new medal, they who had been eliminated at the gates of the semi-finals of the last World Cup.
French markers: Astier (4), Ciak (12), Salaun (11), Touré (4), Badiane (4), Bernies (2), Fauthoux (3), Johannes (9), Michel (5), Vukosavljevic (10), Williams (18)
