Madrid, Spain (SportsNetwork.com) – Milos Teodosic scored 24 points to help Serbia defeat France, 90-85, in the semifinals of the FIBA World Cup on Friday.<\/p>\n
Bogdan Bogdanovic tallied 13 points and Nemanja Bjelica added 10 for the Serbs, who will make their first appearance in a World Cup final when they take on the United States on Sunday.<\/p>\n
Nicolas Batum scored 17 of his 35 points in the fourth quarter to lead a furious near-comeback for the Frenchmen, while Boris Diaw netted 13 points and Thomas Heurtel checked in with 12 in the setback.<\/p>\n
France grabbed a 10-9 lead on a Batum 3-pointer midway through the first quarter, then Serbia busted off 11 straight to take a 20-10 advantage.<\/p>\n
Evan Fournier, however, converted a jumper to quell the surge, and another trey from Batum late cut France’s deficit to 21-15 after the opening period.<\/p>\n
The Serbians scored the first nine points of the second quarter, however, with Miroslav Raduljica capping the spurt on a driving dunk for a 30-15 edge. Serbia, which forced 10 turnovers in the opening half, led by as many as 18 in the second quarter before taking a 46-32 margin into the break.<\/p>\n
France would then regroup in the fourth quarter, cutting the deficit to 61-51 early in then frame. Diaw and Batum both knocked down threes shortly afterward to make it a six-point spread, 63-57, with just over six minutes remaining.<\/p>\n
Fournier buried a trey less than a minute later as France, which committed just two turnovers in the second half, continued to chip away.<\/p>\n
Bogdanovic answered by hitting a 3-pointer following a timeout, but Batum’s long-range shot proved successful again to cut the lead to four, 70-66, with 4 1\/2 minutes to go. A pair of free throws from Heurtel with under a minute left made it a three-point game, then Heurtel knocked down 1-of-2 at the line following an empty possession from Serbia to trim the deficit to 84-82.<\/p>\n
Nikola Kalinic then calmly hit a pair of free throws at the other end as Serbia held on to ensure a berth in the final.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Madrid, Spain (SportsNetwork.com) – Milos Teodosic scored 24 points to help Serbia defeat France, 90-85, in the semifinals of the FIBA World Cup on Friday. Bogdan Bogdanovic tallied 13 points and Nemanja Bjelica added 10 for the Serbs, who will make their first appearance in a World Cup final when they take on the United […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-23437","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-nba"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23437","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23437"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23437\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23437"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23437"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23437"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}