FIBA World Championship: Serbia vs Spain Recap
In 2009 Serbia played Spain in the EuroBasket 2009 gold medal game. It was a close game that had seen Spain come out on top and had gotten Serbian eyes watering; now just about one year later Serbia had a chance to take their revenge.
The first quarter was action packed and quickly saw both teams tied at 13 after Spain’s Jorge Garbajosa scored a beautiful three-point shot. Serbia answered that by going on a 10-0 run. Serbia’s Nemanja Bjelica and Novica Velickovic were the first quarter’s major noise makers. Their combined efforts culminated in 21 points before the buzzer.
At the outset of the second quarter the score was 27-23 in favour of Serbia. It was already clear that Serbia was not going to go down without a fight, not after what happened last year.
The second quarter saw the heat cranking up a few notches for both teams. The defence also elevated. The Serbians scored 22 points in answer to Spains 18 and by the end of it, the final score was 49-41. The Serbians had doubled their lead, but in the world of basketball, and eight-point lead can disappear in less than a minute.
In the third quarter Spain took the bull by the horns and outscored their Serbian adversaries by five points.
By the start of the final quarter the score was 67-64. The tension was high and the game could go either way. Both teams had 5-0 runs, both were tight on the defense while being aggressive on the offense and both teams had everything to lose. When one took the advantage the other would flip it around and take it back. In the last seconds of the match Serbia found themselves in the lead by eight points but the valiant Spaniards would not be put down.
The score was 89-84 in favour of Serbia with just over one minute left when Juan Carlos (La Bomba) Navarro, the Spanish point guard, made a three-point shot. The following play saw Serbia turning the ball over and it was once again Spain’s favourite point-man who pushed the ball to Marc Gasol in the post, tying the game at 89 with only 25.8 seconds remaining on the clock and the ball in Serbia’s possession.
The crowd fell silent, prayers began forming on fans lips, and a timeout was called. Spain’s coach Sergio Scariolo told his team there were two Serbian players they should intentionally foul if given the opportunity, and three that they should leave alone no matter what.
Meanwhile in their huddle Serbian coach Dusan Ivkovic decided they would only shoot a long three-pointer. If they missed it would be overtime, and if they succeeded it would be celebration time.
The ball was dished out to shooting guard Milos Teodosic who had already made quite an impression as a shooter during this game and the duration of the entire tournament. He needed to be heavily guarded, but he was not to be touched. He dribbled the clock down to five seconds while being heavily guarded by Jorge Garbajosa and then in true world class fashion, 28 feet away from the basket, with 4.8 seconds left, he let it fly. He made the shot with 3.1 seconds left, giving Serbia a 92-89 advantage, the immediate victory and the revenge they’d been running after since the world champion Spanish team had destroyed their gold medal hopes in 2009.
Serbia will be playing the winner of tonight’s game between Turkey and Slovenia.
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