Our men have finished the FIBA 2025 EuroBasket pre-qualification with 1 win and 3 losses. In all 4 games, Luxembourg had a chance to compete for the victory, in the end one home victory against Kosovo was achieved. Coach Diederich said that the team played at the best defensive level in recent campaigns. Because basketball is a game of numbers, we can take a look at the main stats from the competition.
Clancy Rugg is the leading scorer, Laurent comes in 4th
Clancy Rugg is clearly the best player of team Luxembourg and one of the top players in the competition. He is avergaing 24.8 points per game which gives him the lead in the scoring category. Furthermore, Rugg is also the leader in the field goal category with 60% made shots – impressive! Second in the list is Harald Frey (Norway, 24.7) and third is Dardan Berisha (Kosovo, 20.0). In the 4th place, Alex Laurent is averaging 19.3 points oer game. The next luxembourgish player in the list is Ben Kovac (29th with 9.5 points per game).
Thomas Grün is the best passer
Next to the scoring list, a luxembourgish player is also leading the assist category. Thomas Grün is averaging 6.3 assists per game which gives him a tied first place with Lucas Tohatan (Romania). Bob Melcher comes in 8th on this list with 4.5 assists per game.
Minutes
Alex Laurent (34.5 minutes per game), Clancy Rugg (34.2) and Thomas Grün (33.7) are playing big minutes for team Luxembourg in every game. They are all in the top 5 in minutes played per game in this competition. Ben Kovac (30.2) is the fourth player of Luxembourg who plays 30+ minutes.
Blocks and steals
Although Luxembourg has played well defensively, the FLBB squad does not have players that average a high number of steals or blocks. Kovac, Laurent and Melcher all average 1 steal per game which ranks them 16th overall. Melcher and Rugg lead Luxembourg with 0.5 blocks per game. With 1.3 blocks per game, Luxembourg ranks 9th out of 10 teams in this competition.
Shooting
Head coach Ken Diederich said that we need to shoot the ball better from behind the arc. The numbers prove his quote as Luxembourg is hitting only 29.4 % of their outside shots. In average, Luxembourg is making 7.5 threes per game, 6 out of 10 teams are hitting at least 10 threes per game. The free throw shooting has been decent for Luxembourg. 73 % might not be an outstanding percentage but it ranks Luxembourg 5th out of 10 teams, the best nation in this category is Albania with 76.5 %.
Rebounding
Rebounding has been a challenge for team Luxembourg forever. In this competition, Luxembourg averaged 30.8 rebounds per game, the fewest under all teams. 7.3 offensive rebounds per game are also the fewest score under all 10 teams.
Turnovers
With only 10.3 turnovers per game, Luxembourg has the fewest turnovers in this competition. The assist to turnover ratio is also the best under all teams with 1.9.
Long break ahead
By missing the next round of the qualifiers, our men are facing a long break before their next official game. In fact, the games of the small European countries in the summer of 2023 will be the next official game for our men. The women wil be in action in November 2022 in a window during the season (EuroBasket 2023 Qualifiers).
Analysis of the competition:
wort.lu –> Ken Diederich: „Wir werfen einfach nicht gut genug“ (wort.lu +)
Tageblatt.lu –> Fazit der Vorqualifikation (Tageblatt.lu Premium)
Note: Since there are games left to be played by other countries, the categories can change over the next days.
