Svetislav Pesic’s Serbians became the first team to overturn a 12 points disadvantage at halftime of a knockout game of the Olympic Tournament.

The CIS team – Commonwealth of Independent States – is the only other team in the tournament’s history to have managed to rally from 12 points down at halftime to beat Lithuania 92-80 at the 1992 Olympics. But that was a Group Phase game.

For a perfect drama, not counting classification games (5th place, 7th place and so on), this is only the second time a Final Phase game has went into overtime, after the Quarter-Finals in 1948 between Chile and France.

Fast forward 32 years to Paris, and what was valid then is still valid today: Basketball is a game of runs. And Serbia knew they would put together a spurt, even though things were looking pretty bleak.

Australia were leading 44-20 with under 7 minutes left in the first half and Patty Mills had scored 18 points and given the Boomers plenty of confidence.

It was time for Pesic to get his players back into the game with an emotional tirade in a timeout.

Serbia responded with a 15-2 run to trim the gap to 11 points and Marko Guduric came off the Serbian bench and scored 9 points over the rest of the period to make it 54-42 at halftime.

Ognjen Dobric hit two triples and Bogdan Bogdanovic scored 7 points as Serbia pulled ahead 61-60.

From that point on it was Serbia just delivering a punch and then answering every time the Boomers delivered one back – though the could never pull away.

This game didn’t just have a major comeback, it also had a thrilling ending as Patty Mills hit a floater with 1.4 seconds to go to force overtime 82-82.

Serbia guard Vasilije Micic said Australia punched them in the mouth as the Europeans were not ready out of the gates.

“They destroyed us at the start of the game. They played so well, they smelled blood. We didn’t respond well. We had the right attitude but physically we were not ready to respond,” he said.

“In this kind of game it seems like a short game but there is plenty of time to respond, which we did in the second quarter. And we got back into the game in the third quarter. We had great players who led us in the last 25 minutes.”

FIBA