Great Britain’s wheelchair basketball men could not quite recover from a nightmare start to their Paralympic opener against Germany as they eventually went down in overtime in a pulsating encounter.

Bradford-born Pete Finbow chipped in with a couple of points for Britain but was not as influential as he would have liked, while the hosts, having somehow dragged themselves back into the match then faded in the five minutes of overtime as the Germans ran out 77-72 winners.

Bronze medallists in Beijing four years ago, the Brits made the worst possible start to the tournament in the North Greenwich Arena as they allowed Germany to establish a huge 18-point lead early on.

That Britain got back into it was in large part down to a 13-0 scoring run in the second quarter and in an incredible final quarter the lead went back and forth before Terry Bywater’s last-gasp shot to win bounced agonisingly off the rim.

Coach Murray Treseder cut an understandably frustrated figure and warned his team that they could not afford to be so generous in the first half in their remaining games.

He said: “We had our chances but we weren’t good enough in the end. You can’t give teams an 18-point start.

“You play catch-up from there, but even so we had a chance. We made too many errors, poor decisions. They had 15 offensive rebounds and we had 13 turnovers, that’s too much possession to give away.

“We’ve been talking about it for a long time, and I hope the guys understand now the importance of great decisions during the game. They are a good team and hopefully we will be able to improve for the next game.

“We were pretty tight and tentative at the start, I don’t know why because we were pretty relaxed with what we did coming into the competition.

“The crowd were fabulous and huge support for us. It was a shame that the final basket didn’t drop in normal time, you’re either a hero or not, it didn’t happen for us on this occasion.”

The loss leaves Britain in need of a morale boost in their next game but the challenge does not get any easier with Beijing silver medallists Canada lying in wait this evening.

Even defeat in that match would not be terminal for Britain, with the top four from each group qualifying for the quarter-finals.

But while Treseder urged his team to improve their decision-making, he insists there were positives to be taken from the game while also calling on his charges to maintain perspective after a first defeat.

He added: “We made poor decisions again in overtime and that ended up killing us.

“Germany are a very good team and will surprise some people here. We had some very good passages of basketball so that’s a positive. We had a chance to win and that’s a positive.

“We’re not under pressure though, if we were in Syria and we weren’t being fed or had bombs dropping on us, that would be pressure, this is fun.”

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