U20 Belgian Cats strand in 2nd Place at the U20 European Championship (Div. B)

After 6 consecutive wins our U20 Cats came up against a strong Netherlands team in the finals to suffer their first defeat of the tournament.

The opening score of the game was for Belgium (1 of 2 from the FT-line) but from then on, it was The Netherlands that took the lead and never looked back, moving out to a maximum lead of 17 points. The Netherlands dominated on the boards throughout the game (with 18 offensive rebounds) and gave our U20 Cats no chance to get back into the game. Our girls kept fighting though and reduced the score to 45-35 at the half.

In the third quarter our ladies managed to close the gap to only 6 points, headed into the final quarter (59-53). But unfortunately that’s as close as our Cats would come as The Netherlands quickly regained control and increased the gap again to eventually come away with the 80-65 win.

To no one’s surprise the top performer for our U20 Cats was Nastja Claessens who ended the tournament with averages of 17.7 ppg, 8.1 rpg, 3.6 apg & 1.3 spg. She received the MVP award and was obviously selected to the All-Tournament team. Sam Daelemans also had a strong tournament but unfortunately fell out and missed the Semi-Finals and only played 4 minutes in the Final. She ended up with averages of 11.8 ppg, 3.8 rpg, 1.3 apg & 3.3 spg. Noor Devos added 10.0 ppg & 3.9 rpg, while Louann Battiston finished with 9.6 ppg, 4.0 rpg, 3.7 apg & 1.6 spg. Renee Denys added 7.6 ppg, 5.3 rpg, 3.4 apg & 1.9 spg as our starting point guard.

Despite the loss, a big congratulations to our U20 Cats for a very strong tournament and of course the well deserved promotion to the A-Division next year!