France U20 - Serbia U20    (lost)

This is European U20 Basketball Championship

The host country: Germany

It's already quarterfinal stage. One of derbies in this round, France vs Serbia. But IMO Serbia should be the side on the way higher level of these two.

Yesterday in the first knockout stage (R16) both have been convincing. France eliminated Montenegro with 70:37 while Serbia was better from Romania, 105:58.

But probably we shouldn't give to much credit to that cause both, Montenegro as well Romania are weak teams.

Before that in the group stage, Serbia in Group D has won all three games including the toughest one against Italy.

France wasn't so successful in their group and finished only with 1-2 record, losing to Croatia and Spain while the only win was over weak Ukraine and it was victory in one possession game. BTW, Turkey yesterday in R16 completely demolished Ukraine with 104:46. That much about how Ukraine is "good".

I think that this Aleksandar Aranitovic player from Serbian roster is way above this competition. He already has enough experience on senior level. Currently is member of Partizan, before that was also in Crvena zvezda.

If we take a look on the stats of so far games, Serbia dominates big time compared with France almost in all categories. For example 61.5% vs 44.2% for 2-pts, 35.9% vs 29.5% for 3-pts, 81.8 vs 67.6% from the free throw line.

Serbia is also way better in defensive rebounding while the only category where France was better is offensive rebounding. But they couldn't convert that as big advantage cause in average France had 13.3 pts scored from the second chance while Serbia 12.8 pts. So, French better offensive rebounding resulted in only 0.5 pts more scored in average from the second chance.

Where Serbia should especially be dominant is in the paint where they are averaging great 47 pts while France scores only 32 pts from the paint in average.

Serbia obviously also has deeper roster cause their bench averages 50.8 pts while French bench only 29.8 pts per game. 

In the recent U20 championships (2015 and 2016) Serbia won convincingly against France, especially this the most recent match. Of course this now are different players who back then were U18, but no matter it is good indicator Serbia dominates over France in these youth categories.

In 2015: 64:53

In 2016: 88:65