France sign off with win to take seventh place

ISTANBUL (FIBA World Championship for Women) - France shrugged off the absence of Sandrine Gruda and some initial hiccups to overcome Serbia 88-74 and win the 7-8 Place Classification Game at the 2014 FIBA World Championship for Women on Sunday.

Ana Maria Cata-Chitiga's 16 points with 13 rebounds made up for Gruda's confinement to the bench due to knee tendonitis as the Les Bleus clawed their way back from an indifferent first quarter.

"We wanted to sign off the tournament with a win," said France captain Celine Dumerc, who had a dozen points to go with 5 assists.

"It's not exactly the game we wanted to be playing on the final day, but then we had to win it any which way."

"We'll go back to the drawing board and look at what we did wrong in this tournament. That's a part of the process this team will go through.

"We need to do it to prepare for next year's EuroBasket (which will be jointly hosted by Hungary and Romania). Our target is to take France into the (2016 Rio) Olympics," added the 32-year-old guard.

Ana Dabovic had another game-high performance for Serbia with 19 points.

"We achieved more than we expected although looking back we feel we could have finished higher. We'll see where we went wrong," she said.

FIBA