The Georgian national basketball team will face Greece in its next European Championship match, scheduled for 4:00 p.m. Tbilisi time. The game will be broadcast live on the GPB First Channel and First Channel Sport.

In the previous round, Tornike Shengelia was ejected against Italy for two unsportsmanlike remarks, but the incident will not affect his participation in the upcoming match. Head coach Aleksandar Dzikić emphasized that the team is focused on its main objectives and knows which games require maximum energy.

“The Georgian team must conserve its strength for matches against direct competitors,” Dzikić noted, pointing out that while Bosnia-Herzegovina initially seemed like a rival for third or fourth place, Spain’s unexpected opening loss raises new questions about the group’s balance of power.

On the Greek side, head coach Dimitris Itoudis rested team leader Giannis Antetokounmpo in the second round, yet Greece still comfortably defeated Cyprus. Antetokounmpo, now an NBA champion and two-time MVP, is expected to return to the lineup against Georgia. Stopping him, as Dzikić admitted, will require enormous defensive effort from the Georgian players.

EuroBasket 2025 features 24 teams divided into four groups, with the top four from each advancing to the playoffs. Georgia and Greece are no strangers to each other: this will be their tenth official meeting in history. The first matchup came in 1996 during EuroBasket qualification, when Georgia narrowly missed victory in Tbilisi but lost both home and away.

The teams also met at EuroBasket 2011 and 2015—on the first occasion under Greek coach Ilias Zouros, and on the second when a young Antetokounmpo featured, though without making a major impact at the time.

Georgia’s only win against Greece came in 2017 at the Acropolis Cup in Athens, where the national team went on to defeat Serbia and claim the tournament title.

This time, however, the stakes are much higher, and Georgia faces a formidable challenge as it seeks to advance from the group stage.