No one from the Montenegrin women's basketball team promised "towers and cities" before going to Eurobasket, and that was not realistic - the lack of quality for the elite was best seen in matches with objectively better teams, contenders for a medal.
Montenegro lost to the Czech Republic by 45 points (89:44) in the opening match in Brno, and was down 34 points (87:53) against the current champion Belgium, so after two rounds of the group stage, they were out of the fight for a place in the next round.
However, that fight did not even exist - Belgium and the Czech Republic defeated their rivals in the group more than convincingly, and Jelena Škerović's team has to do what they set out to do in the last match of the tournament.
The ambition was to win one European Championship and the "reds" will chase it in a duel with Portugal (Sunday at 20.15:81 PM), debutants at the European Championships. The Portuguese lost to the Belgians 52:73 and to the Czechs 52:XNUMX.
Montenegro left a poor impression against the Czech Republic, but improved in the match against Belgium, even though it started with the opponent leading 23:0.
"The experience from the match with Belgium will be important for us in preparation for Portugal. They are an extremely unpleasant team, physically much stronger than us. Although they are not of "wow" basketball quality, it will certainly be extremely difficult. We will have to leave every last atom of strength in order to pull off the victory. Although the match has no result significance, it is very important to us," said Sofija Živaljević.
It wasn't easy between the matches with the Czech Republic and Belgium.
"After the game against the Czech Republic, where we didn't show our true colors, we should have shown a better game. We had a nightmare start, losing 23:0, it couldn't be worse... And as the game went on, we relaxed, played better in defense and that helped with the offensive game. So for almost three quarters we played on equal terms with the European champions. The impression is as positive as it can be after a game in which we were defeated by more than 30 points," Živaljević pointed out.
Bonus video:
