Flamengo's U-21 boys concluded their participation in the Brazilian Interclub Basketball Championship (U-21 Club Brazil Cup) with second place overall. Coach Rodrigo Galego's team was defeated by Pinheiros in the final, 74-69, in Uberlândia, Minas Gerais, after an excellent run in the pre-final stages.

"It was a good competition for us. The goal was to reach the final and truly win the title. We came without Pedro Nunes and Ruan, who are with the senior team, as well as Gabriel Machado, who was with the Brazilian U-17 team. It was an important opportunity for us to develop the next players who will move up a category, to play with me in 2020, and to further enhance those already in the U-21 team. So it was really good in terms of work, but of course, Pinheiros is a strong team, but we once again came up short. We knew we had a chance to win, but we let the game slip away a bit at the beginning. They dominated the rebounds against us, especially the offensive rebounds, they had good use of them, and ended up winning right at the end, with the last, second-to-last ball," the coach says. He adds.

"But the balance is positive, it was positive in all the national competitions we participated in. Now we end the cycle with the title in the U-18, fourth place in the LDB, and we reached the U-21 final. These are results that either equal or surpass last year's, but we are already there preparing the plan for next year to take the next step, to evolve even more and now we return to Rio to finish the three local competitions here and try to be champion of all three", analyzes Rodrigo.

The day before, the red-blacks had beaten the home team, Praia Clube, by 69 to 60. The highlights of the semifinal were Rafael Rachel (17 points, 13 rebounds), Matheusinho (13 points), Maciel (12 points, 12 rebounds) and Matheus Weber (16 points, 8 rebounds).

In the final against Pinheiros, despite the setback, Rafael Rachel secured the competition's top rebounder trophy (51) and Matheusinho was the player who provided the most assists (31).

The next commitments for the Under-21 youth categories are the semi-finals of the Cariocão Tournament and the Under-19 State Championship, in addition to the Super Basketball League Playoffs.