Four European sides will finish up their 2023 FIBA World Cup schedule on Saturday in classification games that will determine fifth through eighth places.
Luka Doncic's Slovenia is the most notable team in the quartet. Slovenia will play for seventh place against Italy.
Slovenia and Italy both lost on Thursday to Lithuania and Latvia. All four of those teams fell in the quarterfinals on Monday and Tuesday.
The fifth-and-seventh-place games will only decide the World Cup finishing order. The games could have been used for Olympic qualification, but Germany and Serbia secured the two European spots by advancing to the semifinals.
Thursday Results
Latvia 87, Italy 82
Lithuania 100, Slovenia 84
Upcoming Schedule
Fifth-Place Game: Latvia vs. Lithuania (Saturday, 8;30 a.m. ET)
Seventh-Place Game: Italy vs. Slovenia (Saturday, 4:45 a.m. ET)
Latvia Beats Italy
The remaining classification games probably mean the most to Latvia.
The European side could tie its best-ever finish at an international competition with a win in the fifth-place game.
Latvia beat Italy behind 28 points and six rebounds from Andrejs Grazulis.
FIBA Basketball World Cup 2023 🏆 @FIBAWCAndrejs Grazulis went berserk today. 🤯<br><br>📊 28 PTS | 12/13 FG | 3/3 3PM | 6 REB<a href="">#FIBAWC</a> x <a href="">#WinForAll</a> <a href="">
Latvia's current best finish is fifth at the 2017 EuroBasket competition. It has achieved all of this success without Kristaps Porzingis.
Italy will earn its best World Cup finish since a sixth-place mark in 1998 no matter what it does on Saturday against Slovenia. Luigi Datome led Italy with 20 points in the defeat.
Lithuania Knocks Off Slovenia
Jonas Valanciunas and Lithuania won the battle with Doncic and Slovenia to put it into the fifth-place game.
Valanciunas thrived in the paint with 24 points and 12 rebounds.
FIBA @FIBAMade him bite before making 'em pay 💥 <a href="">#FIBAWC</a> x <a href="">#WinForLietuva</a> 🇱🇹 <a href="">
Armando Caporaso @Facu_PCFJonas Valanciunas with his eighth double-double in the <a href="">#FIBAWC</a>: only one player has had more over the last 30 years (José Ortiz, 10).<br>He become also the first 🇱🇹 player ever to reach the 300-points mark in the competition
Lithuania needs a win over Latvia to earn its third top-five finish in the last four World Cups. It took third in 2010 and was fourth in 2014.
Doncic put up 29 points in defeat for Slovenia. The performance came a day after he was ejected in a quarterfinal loss to Canada.
FIBA Basketball World Cup 2023 🏆 @FIBAWCLuka at the half-time:<br><br>🧮 19 PTS | 5 REB | 1 AST<a href="">#FIBAWC</a> x <a href="">#WinForSlovenia</a> 🇸🇮 <a href="">
Slovenia will finish inside the top eight in its third straight World Cup appearance. It placed eighth in 2010 and seventh in 2014.
Lithuania, Slovenia, Italy and Latvia hoped to qualify for the Olympics out of the World Cup, but all of them will enter Olympic qualification tournaments in 2024 to join Serbia, Germany, the United States, Canada, host France, South Sudan, Japan and Australia in the next big international competition.
