The world will have new basketball champion after the epic quarterfinal win of Serbia over the Spain with a score of 92:89. Spain is now no longer defending its championship title that it has won in 2006.
The game that was held in Istanbul, traditionally, was watched by a full 15 thousand stands. Ex-Yugoslavian fans were cheering their team from start to finish and celebrated a brilliant victory in the end.
With just 01:39 minutes to go till the final buzzer, Serbia was in front – 89:84. However the key action was yet to go as Juan Navarro dropped in three-pointer and Marc Gasol added another two to make it a tie game. It seemed that overtime will be the order of the day, but… The defender of Greek “Olympiacos” Milos Teodosic scored a game winner three-pointer with just three seconds to go until the final buzzer. With the remaining three second Spaniards could do nothing against a well organized Serbian defense and waved good bye to their title.
Teodosic was one of the best players in this team by scoring 12 points, assisted 8 times and won 5 boards. Besides Milos, five other Serbian players stepped over the 10-point limit which points out a great team play of Serbia. Juan Carlos Navarro was the best players among the Spaniards. He scored 27 points in 30 minutes, adding 5 assists to it.
The first semifinal of the 2010 FIBA World Cup will be held between Turkey and Serbia, since the hosts of the tournament gave no chance to another ex-Yugoslavian representative – Slovenia. Fellows of Bogdan Tanijevic made the game plan clear already in the first quarter, by winning it 27:14. Afterwards, all his team was trying to do is to increase the lead. The forward of Milwaukee “Bucks” Irsan Iliyasova had another great night since he scored 19 points and grabbed 5 rebounds in 27 minutes of the game play. Beciovic and Nakhbar scored 16 points each for the Slovenian side.
The semifinal game between Turkey and Serbia is scheduled for September 11th.
