The Israel Women’s National Basketball Team fell to Latvia 83-80 as their Eurobasket qualification campaign came to a premature end as they have been eliminated with one game remaining against France on Sunday.

The blue-and-white “hosted” Latvia in Riga due to the security situation in the Holy Land and grabbed a 17-15 lead after the first quarter thanks to a triple from Gili Eisner. Daniel Raber scored in the paint while Jennie Simms found points as well, however, the Latvians began to cut into the lead and took a 49-42 advantage as Anete Steinberga (17p) did the damage for the visitors.

Latvia opened up a double digit lead in the third quarter, but Simms (16p) and Raber (20p/20r) led a furious comeback that saw Sharon Drucker’s team draw even at 79-79 with under a minute left in the game. But free throws from Kitija Laska (31p) put Lativa ahead as Alyssa Baron (16p) went 1/2 from the line and Simms’s 3-point attempt went off the rim to secure the victory for Latvia.

Head Coach Sharon Drucker reflected on the contest, “It was a special game. It looked like it was over and we didn’t defend for two and a half or three quarters and then we felt we had to give ourselves another chance and we came back. We made a heroic comeback and were in exactly the position we wanted, we wanted to get overtime when they were without number 12 and try to get the lead we needed, but unfortunately it didn’t work out, I only have good words and want to salute the team for the effort they made to win. We were a little short and in the end they deserve the compliments.”

Daniel Raber also spoke about the clash, “The game started out close, but in the second quarter we couldn’t stop Laksa. She scored 15 points in a row on us and that’s what opened the gap. There were a lot of ups and downs, but you can take the positives, the fact that we came back from a 20-point deficit and we can look forward to the next stage. We will ry to take only the good things from this game.”