VALENCIA (Jeff Taylor's Eurovision) - I like it when a winning coach praises the opponent that he has just beaten. It's respectful. It's gracious. It's just the way it ought to be.

I liked it when Italy captain Gigi Datome and Ettore Messina congratulated Croatia and wished them luck at the Rio de Janeiro Games immediately after the Croatians' 84-78 win over the Azzurri in last weekend's FIBA Olympic Qualifying Tournament (OQT) Final in Turin. 

But when Croatia coach Aco Petrovic sat down behind the microphone at his press conference after the win and gloated? I did not like it. Yet I understood.

Croatia (CRO) celebrate after clinching Rio berth

"Personally," Petrovic said, "I need to tell you that I'm really satisfied when you knock down two big coaches, because I don't have a problem to say yesterday (against Greece) and today (against Italy), on a tactical strategy, we killed Greece and we killed Italy. Nobody can hide that. That's the fact and I'm proud of that."

Petrovic, who took the helm of Croatia this year after others turned down the opportunity, was the only coach to get a team to an Olympics via the OQTs that wasn't supposed to.

Serbia destroyed all of their opponents at the OQT in Belgrade en route to Rio, as most people had predicted, and France ground out an OQT win in Manila, which was also no surprise.

But Croatia? How did they do it? The country's last performance at EuroBasket 2015, when they were coached by Velimir Perasovic, was appalling. The Czechs didn't just beat them in the Round of 16. They humiliated them.

In Turin, everyone was either picking Greece or Italy to win.

Croatia had no Ante Tomic, no Justin Hamilton, no Leon Radosevic. Croatia were supposed to be lacking a point guard. They had very little chance, we believed, especially against Italy on their home floor.

Yet Petrovic told us even before the OQT that he liked his team, and rated its chances of success.

He never fretted but rather talked about how Krunoslav Simon and Dario Saric were going to be key players along with Bojan Bogdanovic, and he expressed the opinion that Croatia had had enough time to get their team into shape and were ready. The trio was huge. Saric, who has just agreed a move to the Philadelphia 76ers, was the OQT's MVP.

The team got a huge performance in the Final from Darko Planinic, a player that wasn't even going to be in the team when Petrovic had the possibility of including Radosevic and Hamilton.

What Croatia did that was most important of all was play defense. When a team pays attention to the details at that end of the floor and the players give their all, anything is possible.

After starting with a 67-60 defeat to Italy on Day 2, Croatia beat Tunisia, and then thumped Greece, 66-61, in their Semi-Final. Croatia capped a terrific week by winning a re-match against Italy in the Final to qualify for the Olympics.

Petrovic was a 'Mr Braggadocio' after the OQT. There seemed to be a lack of class missing from his remarks. I prefer to say that Petrovic, who was a good player like his late brother, Drazen, was candid. And he definitely had a chip on his shoulder.

Aleksandar Petrovic knocked off teams at the OQT in Turin that were led by far more celebrated coaches, Messina of Italy and Fotis Katsikaris of Greece, and wanted to make sure that everyone knew it.

Now he'll take a Croatia team that no one believed in, that at least three other men had no interest in coaching this summer, to the Olympics.

Mission accomplished.

Jeff Taylor

FIBA

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