SRB - Serbs finally play 40 minutes

SIAULIAI (EuroBasket 2011) - It's no news that a FIBA basketball game is 40 minutes long. But after three games with some long stretches of poor concentration and execution, Serbia finally arrived at EuroBasket 2011 for good with a full 40-minute showing against Germany.

And that has the Serbs very happy looking forward as the second round of the competition nears.

"I think we improved our 40 minutes game. We didn't go up and down so much like we did in the first three games. We were focused all the time," said Serbian guard Milenko Tepic.

"Probably the importance of the game made us do that. And that makes me happy."

Serbia had an ideal draw for the first round in Siauliai with contests against Italy, Latvia and Israel, giving coach Dusan Ivkovic ample time to work on finding his rotation and seeing which of his players are in form. And his squad had enough talent to overcome any poor stretches against those teams and still come up with the victories.

And then after a day off for planning and rest, Ivkovic's troops had their crucial match-ups against Germany and France - the other two favourites to advance to the second round with them, thusly the important contests with those results carrying over.

"We didn't play our best basketball but we won three games without real problems. If we step up a little bit like we did against Germany I think we can be one of the teams to take a medal. That's our aim and that's the reason we came here," said Tepic.

The final Group B game against France is in essence a second round match already since the result will come with the teams to Vilnius, meaning cannot afford to take any more of the 40 minutes per game off.

FIBA