Pešić revealed after the shocking defeat: "Our team had troubles with a virus!"

Serbia suffered a defeat in the round of 16 against Finland (92:86) in Riga, although before the start of the tournament it was the favorite for gold.

"First of all, I congratulate Finland, they played a great game and deserved to win tonight and if anyone thinks that we, as the Serbian basketball team, underestimated Finland, we didn't, we knew before the game what kind of team Finland is and how they play and how they shoot, grab rebounds, they are the best in the tournament in terms of that with 16 per game. Tonight they had 20 offensive rebounds and that's why they shouldn't be thought of as an opponent that is underestimated. We haven't found a solution for them. The rebound is very important because we lost to the Finns, who shot 41 percent. That is a definite indicator of how important the defense is and that gave them confidence and they scored threes after the offensive rebound", said Pešić in his opening remarks.

What did he say to the players after the match?

"Nothing. What do you think I should say? The game is over and we don't talk about the game until tomorrow," answered our coach shortly.

Pešić claims that the cause of the defeat is not the bad atmosphere in our national camp, and he emphasized aggressiveness.

At the same time, he revealed that the players had problems with injuries, but also that a virus appeared among them.

"We didn't win games based on the atmosphere. We didn't win games and make medals based on the atmosphere, games are won on quality and knowledge and nothing happened that doesn't normally happen. We had... We can look for excuses and the real situation is that in a game like this in a tournament like this you have to be physically prepared and I think we weren't at that level and we lacked a lot of things. Several players were under the virus. The virus in the sense that they were sick and Jović had a problem and didn't train at all except today before noon and these are things that are not to be trifled with, we are not looking for an excuse, and with a team like this and in a tournament like this, the team needs to feel contact and that they are present on the field and it cannot be said that they did not give what they can give, it can always be better and it did not happen. They raised their confidence and everyone sees us as an absolute favorite, additional motivation and everything that can lead to this kind of situation that you can shoot and score against the favorite, and the players take the ball off your head you receive a triple, they are famous cases and famous matches. If Serbia loses to Finland, then everyone wonders how it can happen, but here it is, it also happens," explains Pešić.

Defensiveness was the trademark of the national team, and it happened that we didn't get into the bonus, did the lack of desire and aggressiveness affect the game?

"It did. It's true and we should have been more aggressive and better in 1 on 1 play and team defense, we had some good moments in some games where we raised our confidence with our defense, you saw how difficult it was tonight. We broke down. We did our best, you never lose just because of one thing and there are always more of them, and now directly after the game I can say this spontaneously, we missed shots and we had a balance established in the second quarter in the game they shot 1/10 for three and then we won that part. That was the key to the game. We didn't do that and we lost."

Is Pešić thinking about the future and what can we expect next?

"Nothing. In front of me, the association and everyone here, the goal was the European Championship and no one is thinking about what will happen after because that is not important at this moment. The attention of me and my colleagues was on the Eurobasket to prepare as well as possible and to achieve the best possible result. What will happen and how it will be, of course, both victories and defeats must be analyzed smartly, consciously, so that we can manage to find solutions and be better from the defeat. Nobody likes to lose. Especially us. It is difficult for us and it's even more difficult for the fans, whether they were realistic considering our situation. We set high goals, sometimes with arguments, and we came across a fantastic team that played excellently and above all as a team, and we didn't underestimate anyone here, and the focus was on the table percent. Everyone was focused on this one game, we didn't use our chance," Pešić concluded.