ID Basketball to Conclude on TuesdayThe first Paralympic Games ID Basketball tournament comes to a close at Dome on Tuesday with all eight placegetters - including the gold, silver and bronze medals - being decided.Spain, with a world championship title to its credit before these Games, has been consistently strong, cohesive and powerful in every game and is expected to take the gold medal. Greece will meet Japan in the day's first match at 1330. The Greeks have improved with each game, while Japan has shown determination in every match despite poor results, but Greece should be favoured to win. Host nation Australia will meet crowd-pleasers Brazil in the playoff for fifth and sixth positions at 1530. Brazil, who came to Sydney expecting nothing, have played well and the colourful Brazilian style and humour of their players and coaching staff has won over the spectators. This should be a close match as Australian stars and co-captains Nicholas Maroney and Brett Lee take on the tall Brazilian scoring combination of Jeferson Sanches and Ivan Batista. "We are going to treat this like any other game - but I think we can beat them," said Maroney. Following Monday's final classification match where Russian Federation toppled second seed Portugal, Poland will now play Portugal for the bronze medal at 1830. Gold medal favourite Spain will take on Russian Federation in the gold medal match at 2030. This will be the first time these two teams have met here in Sydney, but Spain's assistant coach David Martin is hopeful. "I feel very confident in Spain. We have the experience of having played many teams in the past and I think we will perform very well on Tuesday." Meanwhile, Russia are equally confident,following the win over Portugal. "We feel like champions already," star forward Vladimir Fedotev said. |
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