CHICAGO (USA) - Nikola Vucevic had his best taste of international basketball when playing for Montenegro at last year's FIBA Basketball World Cup and leading them to 11th place out of the 32 teams.

Now he's setting his sights on the Olympics.

Montenegro will be one of the six teams at the FIBA Olympic Qualifying Tournament in Riga this summer and if they win the event, the team will head to France for the Summer Games.

“IT'S A DREAM OF MINE TO GO TO THE OLYMPICS, SO THIS IS A CHANCE TO DO IT."

"That’s the plan, for sure," Vucevic said to Eurohoops.net. "We never played in the Olympic tournament, and it's a dream of mine to go to the Olympics, so this is the chance for us to do it.

"If everything goes well, and I'm healthy, I definitely plan to be there. Hopefully, we get past our group first, and then one game at a time. You never know what can happen."

Montenegro will play in Group B against Brazil and Cameroon. In Group A are Latvia, Georgia and the Philippines.

None of the teams will take Montenegro lightly, who threw a scare into the USA in their penultimate game at the World Cup before falling, 85-73.

Montenegro then defeated Greece in their last game, 73-69.

Vucevic, 33, averaged 19.8 points and 8.8 rebounds per game at the World Cup.

"It's great for us," he said. "We are a very small country, only 650,000 people, so it's not even easy for us to put a team together to play. To get to the World Cup twice in a row was a great achievement.

"This World Cup for us was definitely the best tournament we've played as a national team. We've really grown, and part of it was the experience from all the previous championships. We played really well; it was really fun for me.

"We ended up 11th, which was a big achievement for us. We beat some really good teams and played against the US in a close game, and we are all very happy with how we represented our country and the achievements we had. Our countrymen were really proud of us, which is why you do it."

FIBA