Italy stunned Serbia today (Sunday) with a big 86:94 that knocked the Serbs out of the European Championship already in the round of 16. Nikola Jokic, the Serbian star, excelled with 32 points and 13 rebounds. Jokic himself impressed with a big 3-pointer and a foul from the half, as you can see in the player above.
Serbia was +11 in the 28:41 minutes Jokic was on the court, and -19 in the 11 minutes he was on the bench. The Serbian media chose to praise the star, but criticize the players around him. Jokic, by the way, refused to talk to the media after the dismissal.
“We thought we would win the gold, but we were eliminated. Cruel fate, cruel world. Where can one begin? Jokic could not have done it alone and it is impossible to understand why he was on the bench in the first minutes of the last quarter,” it was written in “Telegraph“. “Vasilia Micic scored 16 points but the rest of the team fell asleep, now they will only wake up back in Belgrade. Italy scored like crazy. You can’t believe what happened there.”
“Omission”, they wrote in Mondo. “Micic tried, Jokic tried, but Italy took control of the game in the end. The Serbs return without a medal, a year after Italy eliminated them in the pre-Olympic tournament.”
“Jokic’s tremendous efforts were not enough. He impressed with a 4-point move, but Italy managed to amaze”, they added in “Eurohops“.
Now, after the elimination of Serbia, Slovenia is the favorite of the bookmakers with a ratio of 19 to 10. In second place is Greece with a ratio of 11 to 4, followed by France with 7 to 2. Spain with a ratio of 5 to 1 and then Italy with a ratio of 8 to 1.