ZAGREB (FIBA Basketball World Cup 2019 European Qualifiers) - Croatia denied Sunday's opponents Italy victory in 2016 when an Olympic berth was at stake.

The Croats won that contest in Turin in overtime and made it to the Rio de Janeiro Games before advancing to the Quarter-Finals in Brazil while the Italians stayed home and thought about what might have been.

When the teams meet in their World Cup Qualifier in Zagreb on Sunday, an Olympic place won't be at stake yet the contest will have a heightened importance for Croatia since they lost, 68-61, at the Netherlands on Friday night.

Instead of what many anticipated would be a battle of 1-0 teams in Group D, the Croatians will enter 0-1 and fully aware that another defeat would be a significant blow in their bid to qualify for the World Cup.

"We need to recover very quickly," Croatia coach Ivica Skelin said. "It's going to be a problem with energy and I'm expecting from my guys who didn't play tonight to participate a lot more."

Italy, meanwhile, will have an extra bounce in their step after a 75-70 triumph over Romania in their opening World Cup Qualifier in Turin.

"It's going to be a very, very tough game because it's on the road," Italy captain Pietro Aradori said. "We can't have the support of our Italian people (in Zagreb), obviously, but that's it, we play every two days and we're going to be ready."

Skelin's biggest hope is that his players will not be as tight against Italy as they seemed to be against the Netherlands.

"They worked hard and tried but simply on offense, we need to be more relaxed and to make some easy shots," he said. "We missed a lot of layups and open shots."

Key Matchups: Speaking of Croatia players that can anticipate an increase in minutes against Italy, there is Darko Planinic. He had a very important 13 points and 5 rebounds against Italy in the OQT Final but he played less than five minutes against the Dutch on Friday. Italy's bigs Andrea Crosariol and Paul Biligha would be two players he'd go up against. They had a combined 8 points, 8 rebounds and 2 blocks in the win over Romania.

Planinic is a candidate to step up for Croatia against Italy

Key Stats: Italy made all 12 of their free-throws on Friday while Croatia were an impressive 24 of 29 at the stripe in defeat to the Netherlands. The real eye-opening stat line of the game in Rotterdam was Croatian forward Zeljko Sakic's 24 points (he was 13 of 14 at the free-throw line), 6 rebounds, 1 steal and 1 block. Croatia would love for him to have that sort of production again. Miro Bilan endured a 1-of-7 night shooting from the floor in almost 29 minutes for Croatia.

FIBA