SPORTS
Spain and Russia through to men's 3x3 basketball final
Baku, June 26, AZERTAC
Spain shocked Serbia to reach the final of the men's 3x3 Basketball competition and set up a rematch with Russia on Friday night.
The Spanish were beaten by Russia in the group phase of the competition on Wednesday, but will head into the gold medal game confident of revenge, having knocked off the no.1 ranked team in the world 19-16.
"We played very good defence," said Jose Ignacio Martin Monzon. "The game was really athletic, really tough, with a lot of fouls that nobody called so this means we played aggressive."
Serbia were forced to play without the talismanic Dusan Domovic-Bulut for much of the game following robust contact from Spain's Juan Vasco Trabado.
The challenge was not judged to be a foul, but limited the star's impact and disrupted the pre-tournament favourites.
"Whenever you go to injure the other player, I think that for sure it is a foul," said Marko Savic. "But in both cases they said there was no foul and that Dusan was faking. There were some strange calls."
Russia eased past Slovenia 22-8 in the other semi-final to set up a gold medal rematch.
In the women's competition, Ukraine and Russia will play for gold after overcoming Slovenia and Spain respectively.