LILLE (EuroBasket 2015) - Lithuania handed Serbia their first loss of EuroBasket 2015 beating them 67-64 in Friday's Semi-Final to set up a clash with Spain in Sunday's Final, while Czech Republic recorded a best-ever seventh-place finish in the competition to locking up a spot in the FIBA Olympic Qualifying Tournaments (OQTs).

It is a second consecutive appearance in the EuroBasket final for the Lithuanians and they will now face Spain, who went past host nation France 80-75 24 hours earlier.

Lithuania have made a habit of taking games down to the wire, and they were not about to change that formula on Friday in Lille, France.

When Mindaugas Kuzminskas scored his first points of the night to give Lithuania an 11-point lead at 28-17, it appeared the game may be a one-sided encounter.

But the tenacious Serbs fought back, showing why they were undefeated up to that point, and were still in the game up to the final seconds when Milos Teodosic sunk a three to make it a one-point game, 65-64, with 15 seconds to play. 

However, with no shortage of experience in such situations, Lithuania held tight, sealing the game from the charity stripe.

"We want to show that we are not in the final by accident," Kuzminskas said after the game.

"We are showing that Lithuanian basketball is great even when we miss good players, even if [Linas] Kleiza, [Donatas] Motiejunas or [Martynas] Pocius are not playing we can do something good. It shows the strength of Lithuanian basketball."

His head coach Jonas Kazlauskas was left pondering what the reaction to Lithuania's win would be.

"Before EuroBasket 2013 they were saying we had a good team but not great players. When we reached the Semi-Finals in 2014 [at the FIBA Basketball World Cup] they said we had an easy schedule. I don't know what they will say now." 

Earlier in the day, Czech Republic made history, claiming their best-ever finish at a EuroBasket as an independent country, running riot over Latvia for a 97-70 victory.

The win also gifts the Czechs the final spot available via EuroBasket in one of the three OQTs for Rio 2016.

"It's an historic day for Czech basketball because we have earned the chance to fight for something that many generations of players in our country did not have the chance to fight for," Czech captain Jiri Welsch told media following the win.

"We had two losses in two days and it wasn't easy to come back and play this game. So we sat down last night and I told the guys that we're not playing for seventh place, nobody wants to play for seventh, I told them we were playing for the dream to take part in the Olympics."

Czech Republic will be joined in the OQTs by fellow European nations France, Greece, Italy and Serbia. The other teams also confirmed for the OQTs are Angola, Tunisia, Senegal, Canada, Mexico, Puerto Rico and New Zealand.

They will be joined by three more teams following the 2015 FIBA Asia Championship, and three OQTs host nations.

Meanwhile, Lithuania and Spain already know they will be joined in Rio by hosts Brazil, world champions USA, Venezuela, Argentina, Nigeria and Australia.

Go to eurobasket2015.org for complete coverage of EuroBasket 2015.

FIBA