Spain win EuroBasket title, topping France 88-76 for gold

BERLIN: For Spain, almost all of the names on the national team’s roster have changed in recent years.

The expectations didn’t. And neither did the results.

Juancho Hernangomez scored 27 points, his brother Willy Hernangomez added 14 and won tournament MVP honors, and Spain topped France 88-76 on Sunday to win the EuroBasket gold medal.

It was Spain’s fourth European championship in their last six tries, all those golds coming under coach Sergio Scariolo.

Lorenzo Brown scored 14 points and had 11 assists for Spain, while Jaime Fernandez scored 13.

Evan Fournier led France — which also dropped the gold-medal game at the Tokyo Olympics to the US last summer — with 23 points, with Thomas Heurtel scored 16 and Guerschon Yabusele added 13.

Rudy Gobert was held to only six points on just two shots from the field for France.

“Spain played better from start to finish,” Fournier said. “They had a clear game plan and we did not execute ours well enough. ... We never really had control of the game. They just played better, man, period.”

This was supposed to be a rebuilding summer for Spain. Pau and Marc Gasol, the longtime leaders of the program, retired from international following a quarterfinal loss to the US at the Tokyo Games. Sergio Gonzalez also decided last summer was the right time to walk away, after 16 years with the national team. Sergio Llull and Ricky Rubio, two more of veterans, couldn’t play because of injuries.

The winning tradition simply continued anyway. Spain are now the reigning Basketball World Cup (won in China in 2019) along with EuroBasket champions. They have also medaled in 10 of their last 11 EuroBasket appearances.

For France, it was another medal — and another instance of coming up a bit