Buzzer-Beater lifts Montenegro over Serbia

Nikola Ivanovic hit a half-court buzzer-beater to give Montenegro a 73-71 win over Serbia in their Group A EuroBasket qualifier.

With his team trailing by one in the final seconds, Ivanovic launched what every young basketball player practices a million times on the playground, a shot with the clock ticking down to the final horn. As the ball hit the bottom of the net the video below shows 0.2 seconds remaining and then the horn went off, sending the Montenegro squad into a wild celebration for their hard-fought victory.

Ivanovic’s shot capped a stunning finish for Montenegro, who had trailed by 13 with 4:55 to play on a Milos Teodosic three-pointer for Serbia.

Montenegro fought back with a 12-2 run that cut Serbia’s advantage to 69-66.

Serbia went up by four when Teodosic split a pair of free throws, but Suad Sehovic hit a jump-shot and then, after Teodosic came up empty with a three, he hit two free throws to tie it at 70 with 11 seconds to play.

Teodosic went back to the charity stripe, but again split the two, putting the Serbs up by one, 71-70. Ivanovic then took the ball on the in bounds play, dribbled to just behind the half-court line and fired up his dramatic winner.

Sehovic led Montenegro with 17 points while Aleksa Popovic and Dubljevic had 11 each and Ivanovic 10.

Teodosic led Serbia with 21 points and Milan Macvan added 17.

[embedplusvideo height=”298″ width=”480″ standard=”http://www.youtube.com/v/7QFeZfpVkxo?fs=1″ vars=”ytid=7QFeZfpVkxo&width=480&height=298&start=&stop=&rs=w&hd=0&autoplay=0&react=1&chapters=&notes=” id=”ep2319″ /]