The Estonian men’s national basketball team lost their opening FIBA EuroBasket 2025 Group A match in Riga, going down 98:64 against one of the tournament favorites, Serbia.

The team is taking part in the European finals for the fifth time since the restoration of independence, and looking to progress beyond the group stages for the first time since then.

Estonia played five pre-tournament warmup matches, winning three and losing two, but their opponents on Monday have three EuroBasket titles to their name, and were runners-up at the last competition, losing to Slovenia.

Additionally, Serbia took world championship silver two years ago and Olympic bronze in Paris last year, and won all their qualifying matches for the current tournament, hosted in Finland, Poland and Cyprus, as well as in Latvia.

Estonia and Serbia last faced each other in February 2019, when Estonia took a one-point win at home.

On Wednesday, Serbia immediately started with a 9:0 run and took the first quarter 32:12. All four Estonian baskets came from three-pointers, half of them thanks to small forward Artur Konontšuk (Bursaspor Basketbol).

At the start of the second quarter top Serbian player Nikola Jokic stayed on the bench and Estonia’s performance improved, at one point making a 7:0 run, but Serbia put an end to that, themselves making a 7:0 run at the end of the half. The Serbs were 56:29 up at halftime.

No change occurred in the overall flow of the game in the third quarter. Serbia immediately widened the lead to more than 30 points, then over 40, and the last minutes began with the score at 86:44 in Serbia’s favor.

Since Serbia had nothing more to chase in the final quarter, Estonia even managed to win those last 10 minutes on their own, 20:12, stopping Serbia from breaking 100 points, though allowing them a comfortable 98:64 victory.

Estonia’s top scorers were former NBA G-League player Henri Drell (La Laguna Tenerife) with 11 and Konontšuk with 10 points. Serbia achieved 85.7 percent of its two-pointer attempts compared with 50 percent for Estonia. The latter converted eight of their 36 three-pointer attempts.

Estonia next face the hosts, Latvia, in Riga on Friday.

—

Follow ERR News on Facebook and X and never miss an update!