The Israel Women’s Under-20 National Team stunned France 81-74 in the Round of 16 at the European Championship to advance to the quarterfinals where they will play the winner of the Italy and Latvia game on Thursday. Tal Natan’s team came out of the gate on fire and put together a 13-0 run to set the tone early to lead throughout the entire 40 minutes and put a stop to any potential comeback attempt by the reining European champion.

After scoring almost 88 points per game in the group stage, the French women struggled against the young blue-and white defense while being held to 35% from the field with only four 3-pointers. Gal Raviv led the team with 32 points, Maya Zilbershlag added 16 points off the bench, while Maayan Cohen added 11 points of her own all coming in the third quarter.

Israel opened playing excellent defense and quickly took the lead as Maya Zilbershlag came off the bench and scored ten points by the end of the first quarter to go up 25-12 after ten minutes of play. France started to lockdown on defense at the start of the second quarter and held the blue-and-white to not a single field goal for five minutes, but points from the line, Ayala Oren’s triple and buckets by Raviv helped Israel to a 38-28 advantage by halftime.

France came out of the break aggressively and went strong to the paint and reduced the gap to six-points, but Mayan Cohen who hit a trio of along with Raviv who got to the line time and time again, kept the lead at 61-53 after thirty minutes of action. Raviv took responsibility at the start of the final frame with seven consecutive points, including a tough 3-pointer as the tough and active Israeli defense kept Israel in the drivers seat the rest of the way to close out the historic win.

“The squad played exceptionally well on defense and they deserve all the credit,” a thrilled Head Coach Tal Natan said. “It’s a great joy, to beat France for the first time in a game like this. I’m already thinking ahead, maybe of we play amazing basketball we can also bring home a medal. After we reached 10th place in the World Championship, we are now among the top eight in Europe. I didn’t believe it would happen, but I did believe in the teams and everything came together for us. I’m very happy, it’s an extraordinary achievement.”

In conclusion, he said, “In the middle of the third quarter, I already realized that they wouldn’t take the win away from us. We have a quarterfinal game on Thursday and we’ll be preparing for it. It’s an achievement of hard work by the coach, staff and players. This is history, a summer with two historic achievements.”

The MVP of the game Gal Raviv spoke about the win, “The victory over France came with a lot of faith. We have excellent players and we prepared well with the help of the professional team. We prepared some surprises and were focused with perfect tactical discipline. Despite the poor start to the tournament, we didn’t stop believing. We worked hard and came here to make history. We’re very happy with the victory especially for our country, which needs stories like this that have a happy ending.”