Vital First Road Success For Greece

Forward Zoi Dimitrakou led all Greece scorers with 15 points, on 3-of-4 shooting from behind the three-point arc

Greece racked up a first victory away from home soil in the EuroBasket Women Qualification Round and delivered a potentially fatal blow to the hopes of Finland with a 66-52 win in Vantaa.

Both teams had been vying with Latvia to chase down Group D leaders Italy and this was a pivotal match-up in the dogfight to grab one of the two places for the Final Round in France next summer.

Unsurprisingly, Finnish hopes rested on the shoulders of their stand-out veteran Taru Tuukanen who has been in great form of late, and while she came up with a double-double of 19 points and 10 rebounds - in addition to some great support from Tiina Sten - it wasn't sufficient.

Greece just had too much in its locker, the visiting players finishing the third quarter with a powerful 15-3 burst in what ultimately proved to be the game-winning run, as they put serious daylight between themselves and their opponent.

Olga Chatzinikolaou and Zoi Dimitrakou were the top performers for Greece, combining for 26 points and each coming up with four rebounds and two steals.

Quotes Finland vs. Greece

Greece Head Coach Alekos Daglas
"We came here determined to win today. We knew that if we lost, we wouldn't be in Eurobasket Women 2013. We knew what we were doing on both defence and offense, and we played especially well against Tiina Sten and Taru Tuukkanen on the defensive end."

Finland Head Coach Anton Mirolybov
"I would like to tip my hat off to my players. We played so hard, so intensively. Greece had done their homework and they knew how they could break our defence, they played smart basketball for full 40 minutes. For the first 20 minutes, I think this game was in our hands - we just were not patient enough in our decision-making on offense. This was an entirely different game than the one in Athens."

Greece player Dimitra Kalentzou
"I believe we were better as a team. We were more experienced, and skill-wise, I think we had what it takes to win this game. We had our bad moments, but we could gather the team and go forward after those. From now on, each and every game is our seventh game of the finals."

Finland player Tiina Sten
"The result of the game looks uglier than the game felt like. From the beginning we thought this could have been our game, but we turned the ball over too much and therefore couldn't ignite our offense."