BY REYNALD MAGALLON
Bogdan Bogdanovic started out hot and the rest of his team put on the finishing touches as Serbia clobbered Lithuania, 87-68, to advance to the semifinals of the 2023 FIBA Basketball World Cup at the Mall of Asia Arena on Tuesday, Sept. 5.
Bogdanovic came out guns blazing, dropping 18 of his 21 points in the first half to set the tone for the rout that handed the Lithuanians a bitter end to their once promising campaign that saw them go undefeated for five games heading into the knockout stages.
The Atlanta Hawk star cooled down in the second half but the collective effort from Filip Petrusev, Stefan Jovic, Marko Guduric and Nikola Multinov in the second half proved to be enough to blow out the Lithuanians.
Pertrusev with 17 points and six rebounds while Jovic added 11 points and five assists. At least four other players finished with eight points for the Eagles who already bettered their fifth place finish in the 2019 edition in China with the big win.
Serbia, aside from its explosive offense, leaned on its size and length to clamp down Lithuania, which, after averaging 96.4 points per game in the five games in the preliminaries, was held below 70 points.
The Serbians’ perimeter defense proved to be a tough nut to crack for the Baltic nation as after shooting 46-percent from deep, the Lithuanians misfired and only shot 32-percent from the three-point territory.
Tadas Sederkekis led the way for Lithuania with 14 points and nine rebounds while Rokas Jokubaitis added 13 points and nine assists. Their efforts, however, went down the drain as the Lithuanians failed to take advantage of its momentum-building win against USA in the second round of the preliminaries.
Serbia awaits its semis opponent which will be the winner of the match between Slovenia and Canada.
