Bronze for the Belgian Cats at the EuroBasket Women tournament
After narrowly missing out during a semi-final full of upsets, the Belgian women basketball players consoled themselves by winning the third-place play-off of the EuroBasket Women championships.
Beaten by Serbia by a single point (74-73) in the semi-final after an exciting game that could have gone their way for a tiny second (a basket scored but not validated at the very end of the match), the Belgian team recovered in the third-place play-off against Belarus.
Although they were understandably bitter about missing out on a first final at such a high level, the players, led by coach Philip Mestdagh, eventually achieved all their goals during the tournament.
The Belgian players finished on top of their group with Bosnia-Herzegovina (70-55 loss), Slovenia (92-57 win) and Turkey (63-61). They managed to defeat Russia (85-83) in the quarter-finals. And they only lost the semi-final by a small margin to a Serbian team that would later be crowned European champions against France.
This bronze medal for the Belgian Cats bodes well for the upcoming Olympic Games in Tokyo.