Game Summary

Turning point: After Felipe Reyes and Juan Carlos Navarro combined for five quick points to get Spain to within five, 24-19, early in the second quarter, Serbia then accounted for 14 of the final 18 points of the first half. That proved to be enough as the closest Spain got the rest of the way was seven, on Ricky Rubio's free-throws with just over 40 seconds left to play.

Hero: Actually heroes...starters Novica Velickovic and Milenko Tepic were the main instigators as Serbia took a 38-23 lead at the break and substitute Milan Macvan hit some two clutch shots in the third quarter to deal a real blow to Spains moral, pretty much making the fourth quarter a mere formality.

Stats: One. Thats the number of free-throws Pau Gasol made out of his seven attempts. Well actually it was eight attempts as there was a lane violation on one of them so he got to take one of them again and missed it.

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Serbia sent world champions Spain crashing to a 66-57 defeat on the opening night of the EuroBasket.

Playing at a frenetic pace from start to finish on both ends of the floor, Dusan Ivkovic's team outhustled the Spanish and sprung the biggest surprise in Poland so far.

Using a relentless defense which saw the winners come up with 12 steals and four blocked shots, Serbia not only moved closer to their pre-tournament aim of qualifying for next year's FIBA World Championship but also served

Pau Gasol played 25 minutes for Spain, with nine points and seven rebounds.

notice they will contend for honors at the EuroBasket.

Serbia harassed the Spanish shooters non-stop for 40 minutes, which led to a woeful two of 19 (11%) shooting from long range and 18 of 42 (43%) inside the arc.

"The first game of any tournament is always difficult to play but tonight I feel my team absolutely deserved the victory," Ivkovic said.

"Spain is one of the - if not the - best team in these championships so we did a very good job to hold them to 23 points in the first half and only 37 through three quarters.

"Our pressure defense and perimeter defense were excellent."

Spain, who lost their final warm-up game in Vilnius to Lithuania, were so out of sync that they hit just 15 of their 28 of free-throws for an abysmal (54%).

The biggest offender in that department was Pau Gasol, the recently crowned NBA champion of the Los Angeles Lakers.

Gasol missed his first seven free-throws before making one right before the end.

He ended up with nine points and seven rebounds.

Spain boss Sergio Scariolo, who made his EuroBasket bow, said: "Serbia played a very good game especially on the defensive end. Our shooting percentages were very low and part of that was because of their defense but also we missed many, many open shots."

When asked about his own team's defense, he replied: "It's hard for me to talk about defense when our team only scored 57 points."

Blues captain Nenad Krstic led the team with 17 points and six rebounds.

Serbia jumped out to a 15-8 lead in the first quarter, only for Gasol to come off the bench and spark Spain with six points and help them close the gap to 15-12 by the end of the first quarter.

Dusan Ivkovic (Serbia Coach):

"The opening game of the tournament is always very difficult, so I'm very happy with our win and we absolutely deserved it. We played extremely great defense allowing such a dangerous team offensively like Spain to score only 23 points by halftime and 37 after three quarters.  We were playing like the best team of the tournament, and our pressure defense, as well as perimeter defense, was excellent."

Stefan Markovic (Serbia Guard):

"It was a very tough match for the whole 40 minutes, now we have to focus on tomorrow's match against Slovenia."

Sergio Scariolo (Spain Coach):

"Congratulations to the Serbian national team, they played a very good game, especially on defense. Our shooting percentage was very low, in part thanks to opposition's defensive work, but in part thanks to our missing too many open shots."

Sergio Llull (Spain Guard):

"Serbian team played very hard today, they didn't have any weak points and we made too many mistakes to win this game."

A battle between the gold medalists of the last two FIBA World Championships will be waged on Monday in Warsaw when 2006 winners Spain face Serbia (2002) in EuroBasket Group C.

Spain, missing their EuroBasket 2007 point guard Jose Manuel Calderon while he recovers from a rough-and-tumble NBA campaign with the Toronto Raptors, have two aims going into this year's event.

Under new boss Sergio Scariolo, their third coach in three years, the Spanish are seeking not only to qualify for Turkey, where next year's FIBA World Championship will be staged.

They are also going for the gold medal that eluded them in Madrid two years ago when JR Holden hit a late jump shot for Russia to stun the Spaniards.

"Gold is our desire, our dream and our aim," said Scariolo, who has followed in the footsteps of EuroBasket 2007 coach Pepu Hernandez and 2008 boss Aito Garcia.

"But first, we must take the first steps with security and personality.

"There has never been a team that has stepped onto the podium on the first day of competition. You step onto the podium on the final day and that is why we must focus on the first game."

Calderon made the all-tournament team two years ago and so did Pau Gasol, who unlike the former is in this summer's squad despite requiring a finger operation early in the preparations that kept him out of the country's friendly games.

Fresh off an NBA title-winning campaign with the Los Angeles Lakers, Gasol considered skipping this summer with the national team but the desire to win gold was too much to ignore.

It remains to be seen how many minutes he will play in Group C while he recovers from his finger injury.

Spain are better equipped than most teams to make up for the absences of players and in that respect, Ricky Rubio, Raul Lopez, Carlos Cabezas and Juan Carlos Navarro will get plenty of minutes with Calderon out.

Gasol's younger brother, Marc, who is also in the NBA with the Memphis Grizzlies, will play big minutes at center and Felipe Reyes, as usual, will offer a combative presence under the basket at power forward.

Rudy Fernandez missed games through injury along with Alex Mumbru, but both should be fit to play.

The opposition will ask a lot of questions of Spain.

Serbia is a country with a lot of basketball tradition, although the last medal by the senior team was in 2002 in Indianapolis. That team was  Yugoslavia.

After falling in all three of their games in 2007, Dusan Ivkovic was handed the reins and the veteran coach led the side through a successful 2008 that culminated with first place in Group A of Division A ahead of Bulgaria, Italy, Finland and Hungary.

Novica Velickovic is one of their hottest players, the forward having earlier this summer secured a move to Real Madrid from Partizan Belgrade.

Serbia also have the reliable center, Nenad Krstic, as their lone NBA representative in this year's team.

Krstic has been such an inspiration with the Blues that Ivkovic and the players decided to make him captain.

The strength of this Serbia team, which has the main hope of clinching a top-six finish to qualify for the FIBA World Championship in Turkey, is perhaps that no players really do stand out.

It truly is a team of unselfish players.

Those who come off the bench offer so much that they could easily be starters.

Still, it's hard to look past Spain in any of their games.

Lithuania did beat them in Vilnius in their last warm-up game and Pau Gasol said: "The defeat against Lithuania in our last warm-up game should let us know how we shouldn't play."

Most people expect Scariolo's team to reach the podium.

"We all have good vibrations, despite having had an injury-riddled preparation," Scariolo said.

"The team has arrived as it needed to arrive. Now we have to compete."

Key match-up: Marc Gasol v Nenad Krstic.

Key stat: Turnovers. Serbia need to be on their guard against a Spanish team that gets a spark from the steal-happy Rubio.

Sounding Off: "Serbia has talent and young players hungry to make  names for themselves. They are strong, they know how to play and most of all, they put the ball in. It appears they are going back to what used to be Serbian basketball. We must start on the right foot because if we want to be champions, we must establish the rhythm from the start."  -Pau Gasol (Spain)