'Historically they're one of the better sides,' Ireland coach looks ahead to Croatia tie

Ireland U20 Men's head coach Thomas Walsh wants his team to 'spring another surprise' when they take on Croatia in their first FIBA Youth EuroBasket 9-16th classification game at 11:00 on Friday morning. 

Croatia finished in 3rd place in Group A with the same 2-2 record as Ireland, picking up wins against Latvia and Switzerland between defeats against Finland and Slovakia, which as surprised the Irish head coach.

"Historically - they're one of the better sides in all of these tournaments, so to see them in this round is a bit of surprise. They're averaging around 64 points-per-game so we will be aiming to keep them in that range and see if we can pull off another suprise, similar to that against the Netherlands in the group phase," said Walsh.

Ivan Bogdanovic will be a player to watch for the Croats. The Cedevita Junior guard is averaging 18.5 points and 7 rebounds per game in the tournament to date, including standout games against Finland and Latvia, where he scored almost 40% of his team's points in the two games combined. As a team they are the second most efficient in the competition from inside the arc, shooting 54.4% - while they rank 4th (two places ahead of Ireland) in rebounding. 

Ireland though can count their first four games as a success. Looking back at the group phase as a whole, coach Walsh added that his team have taken learnings from both wins and defeats. "We are fortunate in the case of Azerbaijan that we were able to learn from a win - giving up a 20-point lead, realising that any game can go any way and each game is just a battle to survive. Finishing 2-2 was great but now it's back to 0-0 in the classification rounds."

You can watch Ireland vs Croatia at the U20 Men's Youth EuroBasket here from 11:00 tomorrow.