World champions Spain stunned by Serbia at EuroBasket

OLYMPIC silver medallists and red-hot EuroBasket favourites Spain crashed to a stunning 66-57 defeat at the hands of Serbia in Warsaw.

REACHING HIGH: Spain's LA Laker Pau Gasol was a villain for the world champions on the opening night at EuroBasket

The world champions, who will face Chris Finch’s Great Britain later today, were outsmarted by Dusan Ivkovic’s team in the shock result of the opening day in Poland.

Novica Velickovic and Milenko Tepic both starred for Serbia while Milan Macvan also delivered under pressure and Nenad Krstic top scored with 17 points and six rebounds.

The same cannot be said of Spain’s misfiring LA Laker Pau Gasol – who missed his first seven free throws.

Indeed, in a decisive statistic, Spain converted just over 50 percent of their free throw attempts.

"The first game of any tournament is always difficult to play but I feel my team absolutely deserved the victory," said Ivkovic.

"Spain is one of the - if not the - best team in these championships so we did a very good job to hold them to 23 points in the first half and only 37 through three quarters.

"Our pressure defense and perimeter defense were excellent."

Spain boss Sergio Scariolo vowed to bounce back against EuroBasket newcomers Great Britain, who stuttered to a 72-59 defeat against Slovenia in the other group C fixture.

"Serbia played a very good game, especially on the defensive end,” he said.

“Our shooting percentages were very low and part of that was because of their defense but also we missed many, many open shots.

“It’s disappointing but we have to beat Great Britain well now to restore confidence.”

In group A – Greece beat Macedonia 86-54 and Croatia eased by Israel 86-79. Russia and France were victorious in group B with 81-68 and 70-65 wins over Latvia and Germany respectively.

Hosts Poland started with a win in group D – beating Bulgaria 90-78 while Turkey beat Lithuania 84-76 in the other fixture.