Serbia Leave Antwerp Without Medal, France Take Bronze 21-14
Serbia's 3x3 basketball team won their group, beat Lithuania in overtime, but lost to the Netherlands in the semifinal and to France in the bronze medal match in Antwerp.
Antwerp, Sunday evening. Serbia’s national 3x3 basketball team stands by the court, watching Lorenco Piroa Samson celebrate the basket that gave France the bronze medal. For Strahinja Stojacic’s squad, it was their third game of a single day, and the last one at this European Championship.
The tournament in Antwerp started well for Serbia. On Saturday the team won every match in the group stage and finished top of the group without a single loss. Sunday, though, brought real basketball drama: three games within a few hours, and by the end of the day, no medal.
First up was Lithuania in the quarterfinal. The game went to overtime, and Marko Brankovic settled it with the winning basket, 21-19. That win sent Serbia into the semifinal, among the tournament’s last four teams.
The good feeling did not last. The Netherlands waited in the semifinal, and Serbia played its weakest game of the day there, losing 20-14. The numbers tell the story: Strahinja Stojacic scored six points, Djordje Simeunovic five, Nenad Nerandzic two, and Marko Brankovic one. On the other side, Worthy de Jong was the most effective with nine points, and the Dutch looked more composed and confident from the start. At one point tempers flared between players on the court, but the situation was quickly defused and the game continued without further incident.
Bronze slipped away in the final minutes
The semifinal loss meant Serbia would play for third place, at 8:45 p.m., against France. Just like in the semifinal, a poor start shaped the game. The French came out stronger, led 5-3, and then, through a player named Samson, pulled ahead 11-7. Stojacic and Nerandzic could not slow their rhythm, and the lead grew by the minute.
The turning point came after a missed shot by Stojacic and the timeout that followed. France led 14-11 and had the ball; Samson scored off a pick and roll, and Brankovic was called for traveling right after. The lead stretched to 16-11. Samson then hit a three over Nerandzic to make it 18-12, added a basket off a drive for 19-12, and Serbia was on the verge of losing touch entirely. Simeunovic’s basket cut it to 19-14 and offered a flicker of hope, but Samson had the last word, another three for a final 21-14 and the bronze medal for France.
What makes the loss harder to swallow is that France played that game with only three players available, and Lorenco Piroa Samson scored 17 of their points by himself. In both the semifinal and the bronze medal game, Serbia started slowly and never managed to close the gap.
No new medal to show for it
For Serbian 3x3 basketball, Antwerp goes down as a tournament without a medal, leaving the all time European Championship tally at five gold and two silver medals. The group stage showed that the team of Stojacic, Simeunovic, Nerandzic and Brankovic has the quality to compete at the top, and the overtime win over Lithuania confirmed it. But two losses in two days, both marked by slow starts the team could never overturn, are the homework left ahead of the next competition. In 3x3 basketball, where a game lasts ten minutes and a weak opening minute is hard to make up, that slow start is exactly what this generation will need to fix.
