Turkey
Coach Bogdan Tanjevic: "Probably our best game in this tournament, and it was our last chance. Twice we missed very important rebounds and some other small things that cost us the game. Congratulations to our opponents. They recovered after the loss to Lithuania."
Forward Hidayet Turkoglu: "Tough game for us. We had the lead from the start. They are a good team and you have to give them the credit. It was a good game for both teams. I'm upset we couldn’t win, but it's not the end of the world. We'll do our best like today in the next game. We have one more chance and let's see what happens."
Italy
Coach Carlo Recalcati: "Before the game we knew we needed to win two games in a row to continue in the championship."
"In the beginning we suffered a lot from the offensive play of Turkey and also in the rebounds, where they took 13 more than us. In the second half we played better. Our defense allowed only 14 points in the second quarter, so we figured we need to force the opponent not to score as much as first quarter, and also to pull more rebounds."
"In offense we looked for the right situations, and when Mehmet Okur had four fouls we tried to attack him all the time. Marco Belinelli did a very good job in that, and that was one of the keys of our match. Belinelli played so-so on offense in the first half, and kind of lost focus. In the second half he played stronger at both ends, and this is normal for a shooter like him. He was one of our keys in the finals, because he decided to attack one-on-one on Okur."
"Andrea Bargnani didn't play a good game, but knew to score in the last minutes a three pointer and two shots from the line, and that's important. The whole game the team was waiting for him. If he doesn't play the right way, the team is hurt. "
Forward Angelo Gigli: "In the start we had some problems. We started bad, didn't play good defense and didn't take good shots, so all the time we had to chase after them. In the second half we played better in every aspect and that was enough to win the game."
