Scotland national basketball team

The Scotland national basketball team is the basketball side that represents Scotland in international competition. They are organised by basketballscotland, the sport's governing body in Scotland. In 2005 Scotland, along with England Basketball and their counterparts in Wales combined forces to form the Great Britain national basketball team, with the target goal to field a competitive team capable of winning medals at the London 2012 summer Olympics.

Eurobasket 1951

The Scottish team's first European championship competition was at Eurobasket 1951 in Paris. They lost all 8 of their games on their way to a 16th place finish of the 18 team field, outranking only Luxembourg, who had had the misfortune of being in a 5-team preliminary group instead of a 4-team group (and losing all of their games, as well), and Romania, who had dropped out of the tournament at the last minute.

Eurobasket 1957

Six years later, Scotland competed again. Eurobasket 1957 was held in Sofia. There, Scotland's losing streak reached 11 as the squad lost its three preliminary round games to be relegated to the classification round. The first match in that round pitted Scotland against Albania, who had also not yet won a single game in Eurobasket competition. The Scots proved the better, 69-56. They then lost their next six matches to finish the classification round 1-6 in 15th place overall, ahead of only Albania.

ee also

*Basketball scotland
*Great Britain national basketball team
*Iain MacLean
*Robert Archibald
*Sport in Scotland

External links

* [http://www.lothianba.org.uk/history.htm The History of Basketball in the East of Scotland]
* [http://www.lothianba.org.uk/ Lothian Basketball Association]