{"id":124372,"date":"2025-09-07T00:47:07","date_gmt":"2025-09-07T00:47:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/124372\/"},"modified":"2025-09-07T00:47:07","modified_gmt":"2025-09-07T00:47:07","slug":"sasu-salin-following-finlands-crazy-win-we-plan-to-go-forward-from-this","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/124372\/","title":{"rendered":"Sasu Salin following Finland’s crazy win: “We plan to go forward from this”"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Cesare Milanti \/\u00a0info@eurohoops.net<\/a><\/p>\n

Riga, Latvia \u2013\u00a0Some basketball games are just perfect, and this Round of 16 matchup against Serbia was indeed perfect for Finland. Probably, everybody didn\u2019t expect such an outcome, but Sasu Salin.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe did it. We expected that, but nobody else did, so we\u2019re happy,\u201d the experienced shooting guard opened after the craziest game in Finnish basketball history.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur energy in the past two games against Lithuania and Germany was terrible. We needed to step up and everyone of us did it today. It was a very collective team win,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

When asked if this was the biggest win ever for his country, he didn\u2019t deny. \u201cYeah, one of those. We\u2019re planning to go forward from this; this was the first step,\u201d Salin added. \u201cIt\u2019s about will. I think so a lot. We have very athletic guys, but it\u2019s about will. Everybody did a great job,\u201d he said about offensive boards.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re a good basketball country; it takes these moments to really make everybody else believe that too. And today we did that job,\u201d Sasu Salin commented about what this says about Finnish basketball.<\/p>\n

Elias Valtonen was the unexpected hero of his team\u2019s victory, and he had crucial shots against a multiple NBA MVP as well. \u201cThat was the game plan against Jokic, you had to attack him,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\u201cElias has been struggling, maybe a little bit with his offensive effort, but today he stepped up, and I felt awesome. You know, he has those balls. Big ones, big ones.\u201d<\/p>\n

The same \u201cbig balls\u201d that Miikka Muurinen has. At 18 years of age, he banked in back-to-back threes over Nikola Jokic, while also flying once again in transition.<\/p>\n

\u201cBig balls. You know this kid\u2026 I think there are words that I cannot say now about him, but yeah, he\u2019s great. He\u2019s great. And he\u2019s gonna do great things in the future, too.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s what we need from him. If you want to beat these kinds of big countries, you know, you have to make shots. And today we did. And we did everything else well, too. Very happy about the effort.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cLet\u2019s hope he\u2019s gonna be the best player in the world, but it takes time and practice. NBA player for sure, but let\u2019s see how it goes,\u201d Salin continued about the 18-year-old Finnish sensation.<\/p>\n

Ultimately, he dedicated some words to Lassi Tuovi as well. \u201cI think for every game he\u2019s been good. Today, we really executed everything. Lassi has been doing a great job, especially in the national team, but of course, in his teams, wherever he has been coaching. Very big respect for him, too,\u201d he concluded.<\/p>\n

PHOTO CREDIT: FIBA<\/p>\n

Read all the latest news from the basketball world<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Cesare Milanti \/\u00a0info@eurohoops.net Riga, Latvia \u2013\u00a0Some basketball games are just perfect, and this Round of 16 matchup…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":124373,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[574],"tags":[64,63,726,85],"class_list":["post-124372","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-basketball","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-basketball","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/124372","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=124372"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/124372\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/124373"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=124372"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=124372"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=124372"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}