Belgian Lions still undefeated in Pre-Qualifiers

The Belgian Lions remained undefeated in the European Championship Pre-Qualifiers as they easily put aside Iceland with the 90-62 final score.

Despite playing with a heavily altered roster – which included 3 youngsters who were getting their first minutes with the National Team – the Belgian Lions overcame a somewhat slow start to fairly easily pull away in the second quarter.

They followed up their solid opening half with an even better third quarter as they completely took control of the game, heading into the final quarter with the 66-44 score. In that final quarter a relaxed coach Gjergja threw in Vrenz Bleijenbergh to complete his 12-man rotation and Vrenz didn’t waste any time thanking him by draining a threepoint shot. In the end all 12 players ended up on the scoreboard as the Lions put down a very solid and promising team effort.

Jean Salumu finished the game as our leading scorer with 15 pts. Vincent Kesteloot chipped in with 13 pts & 6 rebs. Alex Libert added 11 pts and Ismael Bako finished with 10 pts, 6 rebs & 2 blks to round up the scorers. Loïc Schwartz was also feeling it as he recorded 8 pts, 3 rebs, 4 asts & 1 blk. Khalid Boukichou was rather modest in the scoring department with only 5 pts but he played a major role with his passing and finished with 6 dimes. The Belgian youngsters did their thing as well and Thomas Akyazili (8 pts & 2 stls), Tito Alberto (5 pts, 2 asts & 2 stls), Tim Lambrecht (4 pts & 3 stls) and Vrenz Bleijenbergh (3 pts) all had a positive impact on the court.

Next stage for the Belgian Lions on their road to the 2021 European Championship is the EC2021 Qualifiers which will tip off end November 2019.