Turkey maintained sürdürmek its perfect record won its Group C at the basketball world championship by narrowly ucu ucuna beating Puerto Rico 79-77 Wednesday, despite trailing izlemek its rival in the first three quarters.
Recovering from recent below par normalin altında performances, Hidayet "Hedo' Türkoğlu of the Phoenix Suns led 12 Giant Men with 16 points and Ersan İlyasova of the Milwaukee Bucks had a double-double with 13 points and 13 rebounds as the host team pulled away sıyrılmak in the last quarter.
Puerto Rico (1-3), which desperately needed a win to guarantee garantiye almak a spot in the second round,squandered çarçur etmek a three-quarter lead over Turkey.
"We won when the Puerto Ricans began to get tired physically," said Turkey's assistant coach Orhun Ene, the Associated Press reported. "If we can eliminate elemek our mistakes than we can be more successful in the upcoming rounds.'
Turkey will play the fourth-place team in Group D in the next round. France and Lithuania took top two spots in the Group D, while defending champion Spain suffered two unexpected defeats to settle for lower spots.
Angel Vassalo scored a game-high 19 points for Puerto Rico, while 2.20-meter Peter Ramos also had double-double with 15 points and 12 rebounds.
Puerto was more successful than Turkey from every spot but Turkey commanded hakim olmak on boards. Puerto Rico had an 82 percent success in their attempts teşebbüs from the free throw line to Turkey's 57 and outranked rütbece üstün olmak Turkey on long range 41-35 but it lost 13 balls, six more than Turkey. Turkey was also ahead in second chance points 10-1.
Turkey bounced sıçramak in the middle of the third quarter but missed three back to back arka arkaya shooting opportunities. Semih Erden lowered the difference to one point from free throws with only two seconds remaining in the third quarter that ended 57-56 in favor of Puerto Rico.
"We were hesitant to start with but we bounced back later and fought harder," said Erden. "We began playing better both in offensive and defensive and that carried us to the victory."
Knockout rounds start this weekend in the 2010 FIBA World Basketball Championship.