Italy vs. Slovenia FIBA World Cup 2023: Date, time, where to watch, live stream details, and more

The FIBA World Cup 2023 is soon coming to an end with the gold medal and bronze medal games scheduled for Sunday. However, before that, the final classification games for places fifth through eighth in the tournament will be played on Saturday (Sept. 9).

Up first on Saturday is the seventh-place matchup between Italy (4-3) and Slovenia (4-3). The Italians have been led by star forward Simone Fontecchio (18.3 ppg) thus far, while the Slovenians have been led by star guard Luka Doncic (26.7 ppg).

Italy’s matchup against Slovenia will be played at the Mall of Asia Arena in Manila, Philippines, and will kick off at 16:45 local time (GMT+8). The game can be streamed live on Courtside1891 and PILIPINAS LIVE.

The winner of Italy vs. Slovenia will secure seventh place in the FIBA World Cup, while the loser will finish in eighth place.

How did Italy and Slovenia fare in their previous FIBA World Cup 2023 classification games?

Slovenian star guard Luka Doncic against Lithuania in Thursday's FIBA World Cup 2023 classification game

After falling 100-63 to the US in the FIBA World Cup quarterfinals on Tuesday, a shorthanded Italian squad fell 87-82 to Latvia in Thursday’s classification game. Italy led by as many as 13 points early on before Latvia rallied back to secure the victory. The Italians are now 4-3 overall following their 4-1 finish in the group stages of the tournament.

Meanwhile, Slovenia is coming off back-to-back double-digit losses in the quarterfinals against Canada (100-89) on Wednesday and in Thursday’s classification game against Lithuania (100-84).

Slovenia was no match for the Lithuanians despite Luka Doncic’s game-high 29 points. Overall, the Slovenians have now lost three straight games to fall to 4-3 following their 4-0 start in group play.

After Italy’s tough loss to Latvia on Thursday, Italian forward Gabriele Procida spoke about how his team hopes to finish the tournament strong:

“It was tough today,” Procida said.

“We wanna finish strong because we deserve to finish strong, also for Gigi (Datome), our captain deserves that we play strong these last two games. For sure, there will be a reaction the day after tomorrow,” Procida added.

Meanwhile, following Slovenia’s blowout loss to Lithuania, Slovenian guard Aleksej Nikolic spoke about how his team was just outmatched:

“We tried to match their quality, and in some moments we did it, we came to (within two points) in the third quarter, but could not maintain that level of play for the rest of the game,” Nikolic said.

“They made a lot of open shots, we missed all of them, that's why they deserved to win.”

It will be interesting to watch who comes out on top to secure seventh place in the tournament.