Petrovic’s heroic performance saves Serbia

PRAGUE (FIBA EuroBasket Women 2017) - Defending champions Serbia were on the ropes after a tough start to the tournament. But Sonja Petrovic refused to let her team exit early, producing a memorable performance to keep them in the tournament.

After their historic first FIBA EuroBasket Women title in Hungary in 2015, followed by a bronze medal at the 2016 Olympics in Rio, Serbia approached this year's FIBA EuroBasket Women with optimism, although wary of course that there hasn't been a back-to-back winner since 1991.

But their preparation for this tournament was beset with problems, including the transition from Marina Maljkovic to Stevan Karadzic as head coach at the beginning of the year.

FIBA EuroBasket Women 2015 MVP Ana Dabovic has been struggling with an injury, and then star wing Sonja Petrovic limped out of the EuroLeague Women Final Four, exactly two months prior to the start of FIBA EuroBasket Women.

Petrovic has faced a race against time in her road to recovery, unable to participate in any of the preparation matches, and even sitting out the first game here against Greece, where the Serbians suffered a shock defeat.

Karadzic finally unleashed Petrovic against France - a match where Dabovic only managed to start before exiting within a minute - but Petrovic was understandably rusty with so little basketball in recent weeks.

France flexed their muscles to pull away, leaving Serbia with a do-or-die game against Slovenia. Petrovic was masterful throughout, responding time and again as the relentless Slovenians pressed, and carrying the load while team captain Jelena Milovanovic battled foul trouble.

Petrovic ended with 23 points, 6 assists and 5 boards in a heroic performance, and afterwards she acknowledged the game's high stakes: "It's been a tough situation for us, obviously - we came into the game with a lot of pressure."

"The start of the game was tough, you could see that we were not showing our faces again, and again letting people push us out of the game, and that's what hurts me because I think we are a team that always plays, not pretty basketball, great basketball, but with a lot of energy and a lot of passion," explained the versatile wing, who has been playing the tournament on the court she's called 'home' for the past three seasons with ZVVZ USK Prague, who she helped lead to EuroLeague Women glory in 2015.

She will move on to current EuroLeague Women champions Dynamo Kursk next season, and she once again demonstrated her ability to be the ideal teammate on an elite team by quickly deflecting praise for her efforts here, focusing on those of the rest of her squad: "We finally got it, mostly thanks to our role players who really came big today and took a lot of pressure off us. They really gave us that injection that allowed us kind of to hide some of our weaknesses that we have at this moment.

"Our captain, Milovanovic, was really the only leader who was all the time there - so now fatigue is catching up with her! I spent six weeks recovering, and my teammates were the ones running up and down, doing lifts etc, and that gave me energy because I knew how tough they worked, so i’m proud of them."

Petrovic did admit though that the spectre of crashing out at the Group Phase had motivated her: "It was a tough night last night, because my roomie left me alone! It was a bad idea - I don't like to be left alone, my head starts to think too much. But we all dug deep - you have these images in your head that you might be going home, and we are the reigning champions, so in that position I knew that you don't think about your injuries, you don't think about your pain. We just made sure to stay strong and to believe in each other."

Serbia will take on Latvia next with a place in the Quarter-Finals against Spain on offer - Petrovic will meet former teammate Anete Steinberga first, with the victor taking on ZVVZ USK Prague alums Laia Palau and Marta Xargay in the next round.

Speaking after the match against Slovenia, which understandably took a lot out of her, Petrovic looked forward to the challenges ahead: "Latvia will be a huge game - that's the difference between whether you can get into the fight for the FIBA Women's Basketball World Cup or not. We just need to recover as fast as possible and remember this feeling so that we will be able to have to it again tomorrow."

After that tumultuous start to the campaign, Serbia are now somehow only two wins away from the Semi-Finals. If Petrovic can keep finding incredible performances such as the one against Slovenia, you can't count them out.

FIBA