I know, Serbia is in the championship round already, but I’m just catching up on things?
The semifinals are underway in the 2023 FIBA World Cup. I know Serbia beat Canada earlier today 95-86, but I will write about the semifinals after the United States plays Germany. That game is at 8:40 a.m. ET when I’ll be at a meeting.
I had a long week at work and this is fill-in content for us in between Washington Mystics games and Wizards training camp. So I’m sorry, okay?
Let’s recap the quarterfinals which happened last Tuesday and Wednesday.
- Serbia beat Lithuania, 87-68 — The Serbians, who don’t have Nikola Jolie on their roster blew out the one team that beat Team USA so far.
- USA beat Italy, 100-63 — Mills Bridges scored 24 points to lead the Americans, who had as good of a bounce back game as any after the aforementioned loss to Lithuania.
- Germany beat Latvia, 81-79 — This was the match of the two Cinderellas of the tournament. Davis Bertans scored 20 points and went 6-of-13 from three for Latvia. But it was Franz Wagner (16 points) and the Germans who move on to face the USA, and earn an Olympic berth for FIBA Europe, the most competitive continent in basketball.
- Canada beat Slovenia, 100-89 — Before the Canadians’ gold medal hopes were dashed this morning (I still need to see it on tape delay), they were living large against Luka Doncic and the Slovenians. Shia Gilgeous-Alexander scored 31 points to help Canada move on. Doncic scored 26 points and was ejected.