Spain crashes out of EuroBasket 2025 in first round for first time

Spain suffers its first group stage elimination in a EuroBasket

EuroBasket 2025 was held from August 27 to September 14 in four host cities —Riga, Limassol, Tampere and Katowice— and ended with a fact that has no precedent since 1935: Spain went out in the first phase. Four groups of six teams, the top four qualified and, for the first time in the tournament's history, the Spanish national team failed to make the cut. The same team that had come from stringing together a World Cup, four EuroBaskets and two Olympic medals.

The format distributed the groups by host city, with the four host countries automatically qualified. That put Cyprus in a EuroBasket for the first time in its history and left the mess spread out: Latvia, as host, had nothing to play for, and the rest played for their ticket in the qualifying windows. The second phase was played entirely in Riga, with the round of 16, quarter-finals, semi-finals, bronze medal and final. The road there went through games like Slovakia-Spain on November 22, 2024, with EuroLeague players absent due to the calendar and an emergency call-up.

Who went and who didn't to the qualifying windows

The squad list for that November window left one name above the rest: Izan Almansa, from the Perth Wildcats, joined by Alberto Díaz, Carlos Alocén, Josep Puerto, Mario Saint-Supery, Rafa Villar, Sergio de Larrea, Jonathan Barreiro, Miquel Salvó, Oriol Paulí, Santi Yusta, Xabi López-Arostegui, Fran Guerra and Jaime Pradilla. ACB rotation names, secondary and some tertiary, the ones the calendar allows when the EuroLeague doesn't release anyone.

The underlying debate was not the list, it was the system. Some argue that the windows are a poorly resolved invention and that a traditional pre-qualification phase, as in football, would avoid the circus of calling up players who will never wear the national team shirt again. On the other hand, they are a gateway for smaller national teams that otherwise would not compete. The result, in any case, was that Spain played for qualification with a B team and achieved it. The problem came later.

The debacle: Greece, Georgia and the free throws

In the tournament, Spain competed with a squad in reconstruction. They beat Bosnia without too much trouble and thrashed Cyprus by 44 points —the same Cyprus that weeks earlier seemed a dangerous rival—, but lost to Greece in a game that slipped away from the free-throw line. Fourteen missed free throws. With a reasonable percentage, the game is won. The Greeks entered the bonus before the Spaniards in the last two quarters, and Spain was unable to close out the rebound and the score.

The other decisive clash was against Georgia. The defeat conditioned the rest. With two wins and three losses, qualification was resolved by head-to-head, and Georgia had won. Spain depended on third parties: if Bosnia beat Georgia, things got complicated; if Greece beat Spain, Georgia advanced even by losing. The calculator became the sixth player.

Scariolo's last dance and Chus Mateo's succession

Sergio Scariolo said goodbye with a record that many would sign for: a World Cup, four EuroBaskets and two Olympic medals. Twenty years in which Spain went from being a supporting actor to rubbing shoulders with the two best European national teams in history. Some say that the greatness of that team was having seven or eight players accustomed to playing decisive minutes at their clubs, and that cannot be manufactured in one generation. The current generation, however, lives with the doubt of whether those in the NBA are there to play or to wave towels.

The succession points to Chus Mateo. His appointment does not enthuse everyone, but no one forgets what Scariolo did with a national team that was not his. The question now is how long it takes for a group that has Almansa as its only promise with the look of a breakthrough to gel.

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The first-phase calculator left a bitter aftertaste: Spain did not depend on itself and the head-to-head tiebreaker system condemned it. The elimination was not an accident, it was the consequence of not having beaten Georgia. And with the World Cup just around the corner, the countdown is already on.