Turkey Tops Slovenia, Makes First World Championship Semifinal

Ersan Ilyasova scored 19 points to help host Turkey reach the semifinals of the basketball world championship for the first time with a 95-68 win over Slovenia.

The undefeated Turks will face Serbia on Saturday after burying Slovenia by hitting 10 of 17 3-pointers, while beating their rival to nearly every loose ball.

"The guys, they flew," Turkey's coach Bogdan Tanjevic said. "They played the best of these seven games."

The teams traded leads five times until Kerem Tunceri's 3-pointer with 6:35 left in the first quarter put Turkey up, 12-11.

That was the second of four threes Turkey hit in the span of three minutes, each one drawing huge roars from a highly partisan capacity crowd of about 15,500, packed with red and white.

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Turkey finished the quarter on a 15-3 run to go up, 27-14. It kept the pressure on to start the second, hitting four threes in four minutes to open up a 41-25 lead with 5:25 to go.

Turkey, the tournament's best 3-point shooting team, made 8-of-11 three-pointers in the first half. It led 50-31 at half.

FanHouse's Chris Tomasson is in Turkey for the 2010 FIBA World Championship.

"They spread the floor really well," said Slovenia's Bostjan Nachbar, who scored 16 points. "We didn't adjust well to that and we were not aggressive enough today to make them take tough shots, to use fouls and all that, so we pretty much gave them open shots and they took advantage of that."

The Turks pushed the lead to 24 early in the second half, playing with an intensity that had guard Omer Onan clenching his fists and screaming after a 24-second violation was called on Turkey. Slovenia pulled to within 60-41 with 4:55 left in the third quarter, but got no closer.

Down 64-41, Slovenia called a timeout with 3:27 to go in the third quarter. Gasper Vidmar, head down, walked toward his bench, yanked out the bottom of his green jersey and threw it down violently.

"Turkey deserved to win, they played an excellent game," Slovenian coach Mehmed Becirovic said. "They opened very well and they shot very good from two and three-point range. They spent a lot of energy on defense because they are very aggressive. We didn't have the chance after the first quarter. We tried to get back but tonight we had no chance."

Sani Becirovic had 16 points for Slovenia, and five Turks finished in double digits.

"We're happy and honored to have won," Turkey forward Kerem Gonlum said. "It was very important for us to reach the semifinals. Since the start of the tournament we had a belief that we would make it this far but we didn't think it would happen like this. Slovenia are a good team offensively so we aimed to shut them down and did it. Thanks to all our fans. This year has been very tough for our coach (Tanjevic) so we want to give him this gift (performing well in the tournament)."

"We played an excellent game," Tanjevic said. "I think my players fought really hard. This was our strongest performance of the tournament. I'm really proud of these guys. It's historic for our team to make it to the semifinals. They have never done it in this tournament before. We will see how we can do against a great great team of Serbia. They play fantastic basketball."

Serbia earlier upset defending champion Spain 92-89 to book its semifinal place.

Information from the Associated Press and FIBA.com was used in this report.