CRO - Croatia a game away from first taste of Olympics

LODZ (EuroBasket Women) - Croatia beat Latvia in Thursday's 5th-8th place classification game to move within a win of their first-ever Olympic experience.

Less than 24 hours after losing to Czech Republic in the Quarter-Finals, Stipe Bralic's charges used a strong second half to pull away from their opponents for an 84-75 win that saw them advance to Saturday's fifth place game.

The winner of that contest will get the last berth available to European teams for the Olympic Qualifying Tournament.

And that fact was not lost on Bralic.

"We have not had a lot of success with women's basketball until now," he said.

"Now we can get into the qualifying tournament for the Olympics with one more win.

"We will do everything we can to win on Saturday."

Bralic paid tribute to his players for putting Wednesday's defeat out of their minds long enough to focus on the task at hand against Latvia.

"I am very proud of my players and how they played. We had good ball movement to beat Latvia's zone defence," he said.

He also paid tribute to players who have fallen victim to injuries and were not able to play their usual part in the team's success.

"We are playing without some of our best players like Ana (Lelas, who suffered an injury in the defeat to Latvia in the Preliminary Round) and also our point guard Andja Jelavic and forward Marija Vrsaljko (both of whom are not on the team for the tournament).

"They have been very important to this team so this is a win for them as well."

Team captain Sandra Mandir (pictured) was jubilant after beating Latvia.

A day after scoring 27 points in the loss to the Czechs, she had just 13 but welcomed all the support she got from her team-mates in arguably their biggest game.

"I'll take a win like this every time," she said. "It was a great team effort and now we are a win from the Olympics.

"This tournament shows that anything is possible."

Iva Ciglar, who had her best game of the tournament with 17 points and nine assists, explained how her team is making Croatian women's basketball history.

"It feels great because we came here to fight for the fifth place and getting into the Olympic Qualifying Tournament and now we're almost there," she said

"We thought that maybe fighting for the medals might be a little too much.

Of course you're hoping for it and you want to put that medal around your neck. But obviously from the start we wanted to get that fifth place.

"Now we're one step closer to it. We've had some tough games but some great ones too.

"This is the greatest success in Croatia's women's basketball."

Whether they win or lose, Croatia are already assured of their best result in international women's basketball competition.

Their previous best was finishing eighth at the 1995 and 1999 European Championships.

Ciglar however warns that she not settle for anything less than a win.

"It's great that we have our best result already but that's not enough," she said, "I don't want to go home if we don't get fifth place."

FIBA