Luxembourg’s women were able to grab a surprising and amazing 77:64 win at home over Bosnia and Herzegovina, number 17 in the FIBA world rankings on Sunday at the Coque in Kirchberg. This victory came only 3 days after a 56:48 victory in Switzerland on Thursday – a perfect week for our national team.
Coach Mariusz Dziurdzia has started the campaign with 2 straight victories. „I can not remember that Luxembourg was able to win 2 games in an entire qualification and now we are 2:0 after 2 games, my team has accomplished something special. The last week was extremely challenging, I am proud about how my players handled the situation and obviously how they played in both games. It was an amazing week for our national team. »
Luxembourg played extremely well on Sunday to grab a win in front of 800 fans at the Coque: „Nobody expected us to win this game, especially because the opponent is ranked so high in the world rankings and also because we missed some key players. We won this game because we belived in our playing style, we fought like lions and had the right mindset from the tip-off. Our goal was that people will talk about this game for a long time to come. And we have definitely achieved this goal. We clearly played better collectively than our opponent in this game. »
The coach of Bosnia, Milos Pavlovic, said after the game that „Luxembourg deserves this victory because they clearly showed more fire and played a tremendous game as a team. »
Dziurdzia also had time for some jokes at the press meeting after game: „Our game plan did not work out as we wanted to, because we wanted to keep them under 60 points but they scored 64 (laughs) ». In other areas, the game plan worked out perfectly. „We wanted to have a balanced result in the rebounding battle and we clearly won this area (47:35) against a strong team. Overall the atmosphere in the team was fantastic over the last week and this gives us a lot of motivation and potential to improve for the future. When the games went into the final minutes, we took the right decisions and played clever which was great to see. The one thing I wished for some of my girls was that they would have the same role in their club as they have in the national team. «
