BELGRADE (Serbia) - Serbia have officially locked in their place at FIBA EuroBasket 2025.
They have been to the Quarter-Finals in five of the last six EuroBasket tournaments, making it to the Semi-Finals three times and playing the championship game twice during that run. Now, Serbia get another chance to chase gold.
Perennial medal contenders in all competitions they enter, bronze medalists from the 2024 Paris Olympics and the runners-up at the FIBA Basketball World Cup 2023 will attempt to make it three straight summers with medals around their necks,
Coach Svetislav Pesic led his men to a 2-0 sweep over Denmark in the November 2024 window, meaning they improved their overall record to 4-0 in the FIBA EuroBasket 2025 Qualifiers and advanced to the Final Round with ease.
How they qualified
Gameday 1: SRB 77-61 FIN Gameday 2: GEO 63-76 SRB Gameday 3: DEN 52-72 SRB Gameday 4: SRB 98-51 DEN
Remaining fixtures
Gameday 5: FIN vs SRB Gameday 6: SRB vs GEO
Quotes
"We expect the same kind of attitude from the players in the next round in February. Even if we qualified, we still want to see if it's possible to use these seven days in February to take one step up as a team, to start building a team." - coach Svetislav Pesic
"Serbia always has to maintain its level, regardless of the opponent, we have to be at our level, and show why we are where we are. Nobody was here just to do their job, we really enjoyed being out there on the court. I hope it remains like that in the future." - Ognjen Dobric
Qualifiers heroes
The usual suspect were back for coach Pesic, led by the lefty point guard Aleksa Avramovic, who made it a priority to play in all four games of the FIBA EuroBasket 2025 Qualifiers.
Dejan Davidovac was also in all four games, as were Dusan Beslac, Dusan Ristic and Balsa Koprivica. But the rest of the roster had familiar names, too, with Marko Guduric, Filip Petrusev, Vanja Marinkovic, Ognjen Dobric and Borisa Simanic also getting multiple appearances during this campaign.
History
As part of the SFR Yugoslavia, winning the event in 1973, 1975, 1977, 1989 and 1991; and FR Yugoslavia, finishing first in 1995, 1997 and 2001, Serbia enjoyed plenty of success in FIBA EuroBasket history, and they've continued picking up medals even after they started playing as Serbia in 2007.
They've made it to the Final twice, with another fourth place in 2015, and back-to-back Quarter-Finals in 2011 and 2013. In fact, they made winning such a habit that their 9th place in 2022 was considered an underachievement.
Runners-up: 2009, 2017
Tickets
FIBA