Finland Win, Face Nervous Wait

Turning Point: Finland was seven points behind during the third quarter and looked lifeless. They needed a spark and it came when Petri Virtanen scored back-to-back triples to kickstart them for the remainder of the game.

Game Heroes: Hard-working Tuukka Kotti had 11 points and eight rebounds but Virtanen was the man who injected life into the team at just the right time. He only took two shots but made them both in what was an essential cameo.

Stats Don't Lie: Finland won the battle of the boards 46-30 with a fantastic 21 offensive rebounds the real key stat.

Finland extended their Eurobasket stay at least for a few more hours with a hard-fought success against Montenegro.

In a real roller-coaster of emotion which was perhaps symbolic of their time in Alytus, the Finns finally managed to eek out a 71-65 win and now they must hope that both Greece and F.Y.R. of Macedonia also find wins to progress to Vilnius.

With Montenegro playing only for pride, Finland knew a win would give them an outside shot of making it to Round 2 and they started in the usual way.

An impressive 12 second-chance points through putbacks and tip-ins during an energetic first quarter allowed them to streak into a healthy 25-14 lead at the end of the period.

However Montenegro weren't going to just lie down and that became obvious during the second quarter when they upped their defensive intensity and Finland struggled badly.

They were outscored 26-11 as Montenegro changed the entire reflection of the game.

It looked as if Finland would not be able to recover but Coach Henrik Dettmann turned to his bench for inspiration and after the contest admitted it was his bench players who made the difference.

The pendulum swing one final time back the way of the Finns who continued to grab offensive boards with gusto and showed they could execute offensively in a tight game.