Sweet 16 Rewind

Great games in the so-called Eighth Finals (what we usually call the Sweet Sixteen). Oddly enough, we saw four of the pre-tourny favorites playing against each other, with Spain knocking out Greece, and Argentina knocking out Brazil. Outside of Team USA, it is an all-White final eight, as France, Angola, China all lose. Even the slightly mixed squads of Greece and Brazil lost to the all-White Spain and Argentina.

Luis Scola is the Larry Bird of this generation. He is absolutely amazing. If you haven't seen highlights of his performance tonight, do so, now. He was THAT good.

White stars of the Knockout round:

Luis Scola, PF (ARG) -- 37p, 9r
Huertas, PG (BRA) -- 32p
Linus Kleiza, SF (LTH) -- 30p, 9r, 2a
JC Navarro, SG (ESP) -- 22p (10 shots)
Kirk Penney, SG (NZL) -- 21p (13 shots), 3r, 2a
Marko Popovic, PG (CRO) -- 21p (12 shots), 5r, 5a, 2s, 1b
Hedo Turkoglu, PF (TRK) -- 20p (10 shots), 4r, 3a
Andrey Vorontsevich, F (RUS) -- 18p (8 shots), 11r, 2s, 2b
J Lakovic, F (SLO) -- 19p (12 shots)
Sinan Guler, SG (TRK) -- 17p (10 shots), 3a
Timofey Mosgov, C (RUS) -- 16p (9 shots), 7r
Nenad Krstic, C (SRB) -- 16p (10 shots), 3r
N Zisis, PF (GRE) -- 16p, 4r
D Diamantidis, G (GRE) -- 16p (8 shots), 4r, 2s, 2b, 2a
A Rasic, G (SRB) 15p (6 shots), 3a, 2s
Rudy Fernandez, SF (ESP) -- 14p (7 shots)

World Championships Day One - Kirk Penney

Of course, the big news of the day was the shocking loss of all-White Spain to the heavily Black squad from France. France actually started a White player at guard, who then got a grand total of 8 minutes playing time. We have seen that pattern of "starting only to sit on the bench" far too often in the NBA. It is hard to know what motivates it.

There were a number of incredible performances by White players at the Worlds today.

Kirk Penney, SG (NZL) -- 37p (20 shots and 16-20 FTs)
Linus Kleiza, SF (LTH)-- 27p (15 shots), 8r
Carolos DelFino, SG (ARG)-- 27p (18 shots), 8r
JJ Barea, PG (PUR) -- 25p (17 shots), 4a, 4r
Aleks Maric, C (AUS)-- 23p (14 shots), 9r
Derek Anderson, PF (AUS) -- 22p (10 shots), 9 r, 4a
Aleksandar Rasic, SG (SRB) -- 22p (9 shots), in 18 minutes
Ioannis Bourousis, C (GRK) -- 21p (12 shots), 8r
Luis Scola, PF (ARG) -- 20p (12 shots), 4r
Guilherme Giovannoni, PF (BRZ) -- 17p (10 shots), 7r
JC Navarro, SG (ESP) -- 17p (13 shots)
Ersan İlyasova, PF (TRK) -- 17p (8 shots), 8r, 3a, in 21 min.
H. Haddadi, C (IRN) -- 16p, 9r, 5 blocks
Goran Dragic, SG(SLO) -- 16p (9 shots), 8a, 5r
Marko Popovic, PG (CRO) -- 16p (8 shots)
Levon Kendall, PF (CAN) -- 11r (4 offensive)
Kevin Love (USA) -- 10r in 11 minutes.
Marcelo Huertas, PG (BRZ) -- 10p (5 shots), 9a in 22 min.
A. Ponkrashov, PG (RUS) -- 10p (5 shots), 11a