MANILA (Philippines) – Serbia rebounded from their first loss at the FIBA Basketball World Cup 2023 in emphatic fashion with a 112-79 blowout of Dominican Republic to reach the Quarter-Finals. Bogdan Bogdnaovic paced Serbia with 20 points after struggling in their loss to Italy to help Serbia secure a top-eight spot for the fourth straight World Cup. The 2014 World Cup runners-up also improved to 2-0 all time against Dominican Republic with the other win coming at the 2020 FIBA Olympic Qualifying Tournament Belgrade.
Serbia wasted no time in taking charge of the game with a 16-2 run in the first quarter for a 26-9 lead. The Europeans added nine straight points early in the second quarter and the gap grew to 20 points. The Dominicans never got back into the game after that. Bogdan Bogdanovic made just 1-of-13 three-pointers in Serbia’s loss to Italy two days ago and the team leader made sure it wouldn’t happen again and he was named the TCL Player of the Game. He poured in 20 points on 3-of-3 three-pointers to go with 5 assists, 3 steals and 1 rebound.
Serbia shot an unbelievable 88 percent on two-pointers and 66 percent overall, dishing out 29 assists. The Europeans’ defense held Dominican Republic to just 43 percent from the field and forced 21 turnovers. Serbia can now shift focus to the knockout stage where they will try to reach the Semi-Finals for the third time in the last four World Cups after taking fourth place in 2010 and finishing second in 2014. Serbia’s next opponents will be Lithuania. The Dominicans ended up taking fourth place in the Second Round Group I, thereby missing out on improving on their best-ever result, having finished 13th in 2014. The Caribbean nation did book a ticket to the FIBA Olympic Qualifying Tournaments.
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