France reached the European Basketball Championship semifinals Thursday after a strong performance in the fourth quarter helped them to a 64-56 win over 2005 winners Greece. The French trailed throughout the opening three quarters before their inspirational point guard Tony Parker took matters into his own hands and propelled the comeback with eight points in the final period. Greece had made the brighter start and romped to a 15-4 lead early on, after grinding a usually lethal French offence to a halt with tight zonal marking. With Parker struggling in the first three periods, Nando De Colo kept France afloat with good perimeter shooting while centre Joachim Noah held his own in the paint. Watched by his father and 1983 French Open winner Yannick Noah from the terraces, the 26-year old Chicago Bulls center nailed a crucial pair of free throws late in the game after he also made a vital steal at his end. “My son played with a lot of passion and I am so happy the team have won this game for France, they are like a little family and they keep doing a great job in tight games,” Yannick Noah told Germany's Sport 1 television. “These kids came here to qualify for the Olympics and they will surely also dream of making it to the final and clinching a podium finish.” The winners and runners-up of Eurobasket 2011 will qualify automatically for the 2012 Games along with hosts Britain, while the next four teams in line enter an inter-continental 12-team playoff next year for another three berths. Parker finished the game with 18 points and De Colo added 16 but their efforts might have fallen short of the target had it not been for a brilliant performance by Nicolas Batum, who scored 15 points with an excellent shooting ratio. The Houston Rockets point guard buried three of his four shots from three-point range and three of five from inside the arc, having also played outstanding defence when Greece threatened to pull away. When the Greeks pulled back to 56-54 with two minutes left, Batum hit two difficult jump-shots in a row with some ease to effectively seal the cagey and low-scoring contest. “It was a great game and we won thanks to good defense in the last 10 minutes,” Batum said. Earlier, hosts Lithuania, who suffered a shock 67-65 quarterfinal defeat by Macedonia Wednesday, beat Slovenia 80-77 in the 5th-8th place playoff match. The result means Lithuania has secured a berth in next year's Olympic qualifying tournament while Slovenia, which hosts the next European Championship in 2013, was eliminated.
