The Cuban basketball team fell 65-62 in its second appearance against its counterpart from Puerto Rico, in the World Cup qualifying window for the FIBA World Cup, which took place at the Ciudad Deportiva Coliseum.
The first quarter favored the Cubans with a score of 14-12, after recovering from a poor start in the culmination of plays and several turnovers that were not fully exploited by their opponents.
With the intensity in the rim protection intact and better shot selection, Cuba gave its best minutes of the entire window in the second quarter, which allowed it to go into halftime with a 36-31 lead.
The dream of victory began to fade from the first play of the restart; a poorly played ball, the recovery of the rivals and baskets against, a constant that allowed the Puerto Ricans to come back up to 47-52.
The definition came in the last minutes with several consecutive missed shots and poor possessions by both quintets, but the Cubans again had the worst part, until the final 62-65, broken down into a very poor 41.2% of free throws and 21 turnovers.
«We leave with the dissatisfaction of not winning a single game in this window and failing our fans, who always supported us, but we rescued the performances of players like the young Marcos Chacón and Sigfredo Casero, who recently joined us and who contributed a lot with his annotation”, declared Eduardo Moya, technical director of the Cubans.
