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Turkey beats France 95-77
Phoenix Suns forward Hedo Türkoğlu scored 20 points and Sinan Güler added 17 for Turkey, which played its first tournament game in the new Sinan Erdem Dome. A nearly capacity crowd of 15,000 -- including 22 members of Turkey's national football squad sitting courtside -- watched the home team make shoot 35 of 55 from the field in the round of 16 game.
Turkey's reward is to play Slovenia on Wednesday in the quarterfinals.
"Everybody knows the fans in Turkey are loud," France's Boris Diaw said. The red-clad masses didn't disappoint in this one, constantly cheering their team from before the tipoff through Güler's layup at about three minutes left in the first half to put Turkey up 32-24.
Türkoğlu, who more than doubled his points-per-game average from Turkey's five preliminary round wins, then sparked the decisive run as he flashed the same point forward skills that helped propel his former NBA team, the Orlando Magic, into the 2009 NBA Finals.
He drove past Diaw and whipped a pass over Ali Traore to a diving Oğuz Savaş for a layup. Savaş was fouled on the shot and made the free throw. On Turkey's next possession, Türkoğlu drove around France's defense again, this time for a layup of his own.
"We did make mistakes, especially on defense. We missed our defensive rotations two or three times and gave them easy layups," French coach Vincent Collet said.
The Turks took a 43-28 into halftime, then scored ten straight points - including back-to-back Türkoğlu threes - to open up the second half.
"At this time it was almost over," Collet said.
About the only bad news for the Turks came with 5:13 left in the third, when guard Kerem Tunceri apparently hurt his right foot in a collsion with Nando de Colo and limped off the court with help from teammates.
By the end of the third quarter, the game had taken on more the feeling of a fiesta than competition. The Turkish players slapped hands, chest bumped and smiled as they went to the bench for the break, and the crowd chanted and did the wave. Not even two consecutive Batum dunks to close the gap to 71-49 early in the fourth quarter stopped their singing.
Turkey made nine of 19 three-pointers, while France made 12 of 24, but scored ten fewer field goals.
Diaw, who plays for the Charlotte Bobcats, scored 21 points. De Colo added 15 for France, which had started strong in the preliminary round with three straight wins but fell to its group's fourth-seeded spot after losing its last two games. Collett said he wished France could have played other teams from Turkey's preliminary round group.
"It would have been better to play Russia or Greece, but not Turkey this year. Not this Turkey especially," Collett said.
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