EAGLES WITH A LITTLE TROUBLE TO VICTORY AGAINST PORTUGAL: Serbia managed to maintain the lead despite unexpectedly strong resistance!

Serbian national basketball team defeated Portugal 80:69 in the second round of Eurobasket Group A in Riga.

No one questioned the victory over Portugal, but many will say that something like this was necessary for the Eagles at EuroBasket. The Portuguese showed that they are an awkward team; in one part of the match, they challenged Svetislav Pešić’s team and revealed some weaknesses.

This is good for the early stage of the tournament, as there is enough time to fix the shortcomings. What is certainly not good and is well-known is that the head coach does not tolerate such things, is that, as he has done several times this season, the man who is projected to be one of the team’s key players, Filip Petrušev, showed that he can easily lose control.

This time, it resulted in his disqualification as early as the fourth minute. And a rather naive one, as he hit Brit in the stomach, who had previously provoked him. Such things should definitely not happen again, especially when stronger matches come.

Under the impression of that disqualification, the Portuguese managed to keep up with the score, but only in the first quarter. The Eagles won it 23:19, and at halftime, it was already +10 – 43:33.

The bad news for Serbia is that captain Bogdan Bogdanović did not play in the second half. He injured his hamstring and will have to go for a scan, which is by no means good news. In terms of the score, there was not too much drama. At one point, Serbia even had an 18-point lead (53:35). But there was definitely some relaxation, especially in the last quarter, in which the Portuguese managed to reduce the deficit to a single-digit number. The victory was not in question for a single moment, but there were many things that Svetislav Pešić certainly did not like.

Serbia’s next game is on Saturday at 5 p.m. against the host, Latvia. Portugal, on the other hand, plays against Turkey on the same day.