Saturday 2nd September was the final day of competition for Great Britain at the World Maxibasketball Championship FIMBA – Mar Del Plata 2023, and we finished on a high note with the GB Women’s 40+ team defeating Argentina convincingly 89-27 to finish just outside the top eight nations, placing 9th overall. VILMA JURGAITYTE led the scoring 27 points, followed by Michelle Tattersall (16 points) and Jana Bambuchova (10 points)
Earlier that day, GB Men’s 55+ narrowly lost out to Costa Rica by 1 point (52-53), finishing 14th overall. Mark BRADBURY was joint top scorer with 12 points, alongside ALBERTO De ANDRADE and ALEX WINTER. Meanwhile, GB Men’s 40+ closed out their world championship campaign up the coast from Mar del Plata at the Santa Clara courts, and despite the loss to host nation Argentina, they finished 10th overall from 26 teams. DOUAINE ANDERSON led the scoring with 16 points.
Unfortunately, our GB Men’s 50+ team were denied the opportunity to complete their final fixture against El Salvador, who forfeited the match 20-0. Injuries to their team meant they were unable to play.
Reflecting back, a highlight of the tournament was most certainly the GB Women’s 50+ team epic first-round win 37-35 over a stacked Argentina A-team, who were the eventual Championship silver medalists. That game can be viewed here. Notably, defensively our GB W50+ team did a good job in all games, but seemed to struggle offensively (see stats below)
Final standings:
GB W40+ – 9th (of 15 teams)
GB W50+ – 10th (20)
GB M40+ – 10th (26)
GB M50+ – 13th (22)
GB M55+ – 14th (26)
There were some very marginal losses along the way which, if things had gone differently, would undoubtedly have seen all teams reach their respective quarter final stages. However, overall it was a fantastic experience for Great Britain’s masters basketball players in Argentina against some very strong South American opposition. The GB Maxibasketball programme has done Great Britain proud for the third time since 2019 on the European and World Championship stages.
In terms of scoring performance, here are our leading five GB players per team as recorded on the official tournament online app, Swish by NBN23.
GB W40+ (6 games played)
Vilma Jurgaityte – 67 points total/avg. 21 minutes per game/11.2 average ppg
Jana Bambuchova – 61 pts/avg. 22 mins/10.2 ppg
Michelle Tattersall – 44 pts/20 mins/7.3 ppg
Ruth Eytle – 41 pts/20 mins/6.8 ppg
Jen Watson – 39 pts/11 mins/6.5 ppg
GB W50 (5 games played)
Anta Riekstina – 41 points total/24 mins pg/8.2 ppg
Laura Caesar – 37 pts/27.5 mins/7.4 ppg
Louise Cooke – 33 pts /28 mins/6.6 ppg
Sadie Mason – 26 points /19 mins/5.2 ppg
Olivia Maury – 15 pts /19 mins/3.0 ppg
GB M40+ (6 games played)
Scotty Russell – 74 points total/24 mins per game/12.3 average ppg
Douaine Anderson – 73 pts /23 mins/12.2 ppg
Paul Jessop – 48 pts /27 mins/8.0 ppg
Robin Hall – 45 pts/24 mins/7.5 ppg
Steve Foster – 43 pts/18.5 mins/7.2
GB M50+ (4 games played)
Christopher Mark – 43 points total/20 minutes per game/10.8 average ppg
Keith Pringle – 34 pts/25 mins 8.5 ppg
Matt Cunningham – 30 pts/15.5 mins/7.5 ppg
Nigel Fisher – 29 pts/31 mins/7.3 ppg
Mike Embaye – 21 pts/ 17 mins /7.0 ppg
GB M55+ (5 games played)
Mark Bradbury – 47 points total/30 mins/9.4 average points per game
Steve Bucknall – 44 pts/25 mins/ 8.8 ppg
Alberto De Andrade – 38 pts/20 mins/ 7.6 ppg
Alex Winter – 37 pts/25 mins/7.4 ppg
Andrew McKella – 20 pts/25 mins/6.7 ppg (only 3 games played due to injury)
As always, we would like to thank all our volunteer staff involved in coaching and managing the teams, and our Sports Science & Medicine personnel for preparing the players physically and mentally and looking after them on and off-court. We fly home tomorrow and wish everyone a safe journey.
Training starts again the weekend of 30 Sept/1st October in Nottingham for the European Maxibasketball Championship campaign 2024, Italy.
Let’s go again…GB! 
