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GOALS HIGH AS FINCH NAMES OLYMPIC TEAM

Drew Sullivan wants Great Britain to shock the world in their first Olympic appearance since 1948.

The 12-strong line-up for London was confirmed at an official announcement in Loughborough with eleven holdovers from last summer’s EuroBasket finals.

With Matthew Bryan-Amaning, Myles Hesson and Devon van Oostrum already cut following training camp in Houston, Ogo Adegboye was the unlucky 13th man to miss out with Kieron Achara and Andrew Lawrence booking their places along side the existing core.

“Cutting down to a final 12 is always difficult,” admitted head coach Chris Finch.

“We had a really productive camp in Houston and to finally announce the Olympic team here in Loughborough is fantastic.  The next four weeks provide us with outstanding competition leading up to the Olympics, which is just what is required before doing battle within our group come Games time.”

So far this summer, Finch’s side have lost all five friendlies in their build-up towards the Games during a training camp in Houston that was over-shadowed by call-offs from NBA duo Ben Gordon and Byron Mullens.

However Sullivan believes that with Deng returning to the line-up for this weekend’s friendly with France in Orleans, the team can start showing its true capabilities.

“You hope here will be a progression on from last year, where there’ll be some continuity from Lithuania and what we achieved there,” the GB captain said.

“It was a good summer. We went out in the first round but there was still a feel-good factor because of the two wins. We played extremely well and we want to use that to push things forward. It just sucks we’ve had to wait a year.”

Now the attention, admits Deng, is all on London.

“We have all worked very hard for this opportunity and to have the final 12 named is exciting,” he said. “The next few weeks will fly by and I can’t wait to step on the court with my teammates at the Games.  We plan to make Great Britain proud.”

GB squad for Olympic Games: Kieron Achara, Robert Archibald, Eric Boateng, Dan Clark, Luol Deng, Joel Freeland, Kyle Johnson, Andrew Lawrence, Mike Lenzly, Pops Mensah-Bonsu, Nate Reinking, Drew Sullivan.

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