Basketball / Men fight for first, women fight for lives

Immediately after Israel defeated Finland on Thursday night, coach Arik Shivek gathered his charges in the locker room to deliver a message for tonight's final game in the EuroBasket qualifying round.

"We have to summon all our energy to beat Montenegro tonight," Shivek told his players. "We've had an excellent campaign, and to end it with a victory in Podgorica would be huge."

Huge, but perhaps not necessary. The winner of tonight's matchup will finish in first place in Group A and guarantee a spot in the EuroBasket tournament in Lithuania, which begins in September 2011. But even the loser has a good chance to hold onto second place.

Still, a victory would be significant not only for bragging rights and respect, but also because the team that wins the group will have a more favorable ranking in the group stage of the tournament next year.

"Usually it's hard to win road games in these tournaments, but we'll go to war and give it our all so we can get first place," said center Yaniv Green. "We also don't want to lose and then hear that Latvia beat Finland by 30 points," which would knock Israel out of second place entirely.

The women's national team finds itself in the same predicament as two years ago - needing a home victory against a weak team that has already lost interest in the tournament to directly advance to the EuroBasket.

Then, Israel needed to overcome a fourth-quarter deficit against Britain. With a victory over Romania tonight at Zisman Arena in Ramat Gan, Israel hopes to celebrate its qualification for the EuroBasket.

"We're coming into this game as the favorites, but I hope that despite the pressure we'll play like we played in our first home game against Serbia," said shooting guard Meirav Dori.

Israel brought the pressure on itself by virtue of its losses in its two previous games against Serbia and Latvia. So the team's back is against the wall tonight. If Israel loses and Latvia defeats Serbia tonight, it will fall out of the top two spots in its group. In that case, the only hope the women would have to qualify for EuroBasket is the additional qualifying round.