L'Italbasket overwhelms Bosnia: 96-79, Simone Fontecchio a record-breaker
Dreaming Italy at the European Championships. After having managed to defeat Georgia, Gianmarco Pozzecco’s Azzurri score their second win in a row at EuroBasket 2025 by demolishing Bornia-Herzegovina. The Balkan outfit falls with a 96-73 result, mainly thanks to Simone Fontecchio: his night speaks of 39 points, 8 rebounds and 3 assists to the credit, an all-time record at the European Championships and the sixth best performance ever for the national team.
Pozzecco relies on Pajola, Spagnola, Fontecchio, Melli and Diouf, but Bosnia gets off to a much better start. The Azzurri have to recover from 0-4 and then 4-10, but Fontecchio starts hammering from three and just his second basket in a row from the arc constitutes the overtake on 14-12. Pajola signs +4, but the first quarter ends 22-21, with already 12 points on the scoreboard for Fontecchio.
The Azzurri cannot escape even at the’beginning of the second period, with Robertson equalizing. But Fontecchio remains the absolute star, leading Italy to a crucial 9-0 break. Bosnia manages to recover with Kamenjas allowing his team to go to halftime down by 4 points: it’s 44-40.
The third quarter opens with a Robertson again starring and Gianmarco Pozzecco’s ejection. Bosnia makes it 46-46, and after Alibegovic’s triple the Azzurri go back down. Fontecchio serves again, first going to the basket with a coast-to-coast and then again from three-point range. Ricci signs the new parity, Fontecchio and then Spissu build the +8. Then Melli makes it +10. The partial will end with a +11 on the score of 72-61, thanks to another bomb by Spissu.
.
The fourth period immediately makes Fontecchio enter history with the +31 triple: it is already 31 points for him, the highest of his career. But at the end of the game they will become as mentioned 39. Nurkic tries to lead his team to a desperate comeback, but Italy’s all playing well. Like Paiola, who signs a further +13 before his relentless teammate writes his own name in even more indelible characters in the history of Italbasket.
