TORONTO — Germany’s Kay Bruhnke followed up his inefficient outing against Kentucky with a masterful performance against BAL Select, scoring 17 points en route to a 88-79 victory Thursday in their second game at GLOBL JAM.
After going 2-for-8 in their first game, Bruhnke shot 6-for-12 including 3-for-7 from long-range. He also grabbed seven rebounds and had two steals.
Germany spread their scoring around with centre Norris Agbakoko scoring 17 and grabbing six rebounds, Malte Delow adding 21 points off the bench and Jonas Mattisseck scored nine and dished out 10 assists.
“It was obviously better than yesterday. We moved the ball as a team way more and that’s where we got more opportunities from,” Bruhnke said. “I got open shots and I was just confident in those shots. My teammates gave me that confidence.”
Mathias M’madi led BAL Select in scoring with 17 points on 6-for-13 from the field. Amr Zahran scored 17 and grabbed seven boards and Jean Jacques Boissy scored 16 points but was inefficient, shooting 5-for-17 from the field and turning it over six times.
Germany scored the first points of the game off a corner three-pointer from Bruhnke. BAL Select responded with a three of their own from Dhieu Deing after he broke down his man in isolation.
The European squad then decided to attack the inside, scoring their next eight points with nice dunks off strong ball movement to open up space for big man Agbakoko.
Their shot kept falling from long range, hitting five looks from beyond the arc in the first quarter to establish a solid 25-16 lead at the end of the frame.
“We don’t normally play together, it’s not like we’re a team in Germany,” Mattisseck said. “We have to get used to each other and figure out the other guy a little bit, how he moves, how he likes the passes, how he likes the looks, and we’ll get better game by game.”
Though their success rate slowed down in the second, missing three looks in a row from deep to start the quarter, they all came off of great looks, finding open shooters after drive-and-kick actions or heady ball movement around the perimeter.
They finished with a 17-22 assist-to-turnover ratio against Kentucky on Wednesday and went into this game with a real focus on fixing those problems, ending with 21 assists and 13 turnovers.
“Against Kentucky, we had 22 turnovers and the ball stuck too much. We focused on that this morning, getting more ball movement and taking care of the ball,” coach Gordon Herbert said. “This is a new team, a new group of players. We practised two days in Germany before we came. When you consider that, it’s not bad.”
Boissy, who led BAL Select in scoring against Canada with 19 points, couldn’t find his stroke early on, missing his first six shots. Then midway through the second quarter, he went on to score his team’s next seven points with five of them coming after breaking down his defender in isolation.
Despite his scoring run, BAL Select were unable to cut into Germany’s lead as Bruhnke and Baggette scored eight combined points, including an emphatic dunk from the former, to give them an 11-point lead. They would end the half up 49-35 after Malte Delow was fouled on a three-point shot in the closing seconds.
They would only build on that lead in the early part of the third, going on a 13-2 run to start the frame punctuated by dunks from Agbakoko and Nicholas Tischler, giving Germany a 25-point lead.
However, BAL Select cut into the lead, going on a 17-6 run to end the frame down only 13. Zahran found his three-point stroke, nailing two shots from behind the arc, then in the fourth, hit a tough lay-up through contact and drew the foul to make it only a seven-point game, the first time it had been a single-digit lead since there were two minutes left in the second quarter.
“We talked about it with a 25-point lead. We want to come down half court, use the clock, take care of the basketball, get our defence set,” Herbert said. “We knew they’d come back if we took quick shots or turned the ball over. And that’s what happened, we took the quick shots and turned the ball over.”
With less than a minute left, BAL Select made it only a six-point game after Zahran scored a lay-up.
Germany’s Mattisseck then got into Zahran’s face after an inbounds play and the two had to be broken up before the situation could escalate. Both players were assessed technical fouls.
That technical was Zahran’s final foul, and he was forced to miss the last 50 seconds of the game. Without his solid three-point shooting, BAL Select weren’t able to overcome the deficit in the final minute as Germany were clinical from the charity stripe, nailing all six of their free throw attempts.
Both teams’ next games will be Saturday as Germany take on host nation Canada (Saturday at 8:00 p.m. ET) and BAL Select face Kentucky (Saturday at 1:30 p.m. ET).
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