Great Britain made a poor start to the second phase of World Cup qualifying with a 72-57 defeat in Belgium.
Myles Hesson top-scored for GB with 17 points and Ovie Soko added 13 but they failed to fire offensively against a well-drilled Belgian line-up.
Nate Reinking’s team finished the third quarter well and exerted pressure at the start of the fourth, only to again struggle to sustain a scoring run.
GB’s next game is on Sunday, when they host group leaders Latvia in Newcastle.
Coming into the second phase with a single win and bottom of the combined standings, GB needed to win at least four of their second-round games in order to qualify for the finals.
With Soko, Teddy Okereafor and Luke Nelson restored to the line-up after missing the last round of qualifiers, GB were fielding their their strongest line-up for a while, but their ongoing lack of preparation games showed in a disjointed performance in attack.
The 57 points they scored was their lowest in a qualifying game for 12 years.
At the start of the fourth quarter, GB upped the tempo and forced Belgium to commit fouls and handling errors, but still could not manage to score consistently.
“Belgium were the better team on the night and this is a blow to our chances of qualifying,” said GB captain Dan Clark. “We struggled to find the offensive flow we needed – we need to get better in a lot of areas.”
Group I table
| Latvia | 5 | 4 | 1 | 9 | +38 |
| Greece | 5 | 3 | 2 | 8 | +17 |
| Belgium | 5 | 3 | 2 | 8 | +14 |
| Turkey | 5 | 2 | 3 | 7 | -5 |
| Serbia | 5 | 2 | 3 | 7 | -5 |
| Great Britain | 5 | 1 | 4 | 6 | -59 |
(Top three teams qualify for finals)
GB’s upcoming qualifiers:
Sun 28 Aug: GB v Latvia (Newcastle, 18:00)
Thu 10 Nov: GB v Serbia (venue and time TBA)
Sun 13 Nov: Latvia v GB (venue and time TBA)
Fri 24 Feb: GB v Belgium (venue and time TBA)
Mon 27 Feb: Serbia v GB (venue and time TBA)
