The Israel Under-19 National Team heads into their Round of 16 knockout clash against Cameroon (Wednesday 5:45pm Israel time) at the World Championship in Lausanne, Switzerland sporting a 3-0 record after sweeping through Group C. The blue-and-white put the finishing touches on a perfect group record after defeating Dominican Republic 80-76 in what was a tough game for Head Coach Sharon Avrahami’s squad.

Following the victory, the bench boss spoke about the victory while also looking ahead to their next challenge, “We didn’t think it would be an easy game. They were aggressive, much more than they have been so far. An athletic team, we had a focus on splitting up our minutes and we partially succeeded in that. Every victory in the World Championship is not a given. As for Cameroon, they are an athletic team that is better than the teams that we have faced so far. We will have to recover well and come sharp and focused in order to give everything that we’ve got.”

“We were kind of relaxed over the course of the last minutes,” Avrahami continued. “But we showed a lot of character. We want to achieve something here and we aware that the level of play is going to be even higher from here on in. We will have to deal with their athleticism and control the rebound which I hope we can do.”

Rany Belaga, who was one of the standouts for Israel added, “This was a lot of fun. We are happy that we managed to record some good results in the group stage. We are ready to win our fourth game against Cameroon which is a very good team that caused quite a bit of trouble for Australia. They are a team with size, athleticism and the players are tall. I feel good, confident about my play and I feel that the team trusts me.”