France vs. Spain: FIBA World Cup 2014 Quarterfinal Score and Twitter Reaction

Many said the 2014 FIBA Basketball World Cup wouldn't even begin until a team gave the United States or Spain a scare. Well, apparently it's time to start paying attention.    

Taking advantage of some uncharacteristically sloppy Spanish shooting and a surprisingly stellar evening on the boards, France pulled the biggest upset in recent international basketball history, holding on late for a 65-52 victory over Spain in their quarterfinals matchup.      

Boris Diaw scored 15 points and Thomas Heurtel added 13, but the real story was how the French defense made Spain look out of sorts. The home country shot just 32.3 percent from the floor, including a dreadful 2-of-22 from beyond the three-point arc.

"If we don't elevate our defensive level, there's no game," France coach Vincent Collet said, per FIBA. "They're too talented. When you play against a team better than you, your first goal is to slow them down. If you want to be better than them you'll never win."

Battling obvious fits of nervousness and distress, Spain watched as shot after shot didn't fall though the net. Pau Gasol scored 17 points and had eight rebounds, but the Spaniards got next to nothing from his co-stars. Ricky Rubio, Marc Gasol and Serge Ibaka combined to shoot 3-of-21 from the field, while Juan Carlos Navarro's solid overall game floundered down the stretch.

Ahead 43-42 heading into the fourth despite a miserable first three quarters, Spain missed 13 of its 16 shots in the final 10 minutes. Considered a near-lock for at least a finals berth against Team USA—Spain was one of a select few teams with a full roster and has made the last two Olympic gold-medal games—the veteran roster cracked under the weight of the pressure.

Daniel Ochoa de Olza/Associated Press

Players wildly gesticulated when calls didn't go their way. They flew around the floor defensively, desperate to create turnovers. Bad, off-the-dribble shots piled up as Spain realized far too late going to Gasol was its only effective option. France, which itself shot below 40 percent and made just a quarter of its threes, outscored Spain 23-9 in the fourth quarter on the back of that sloppiness and desperation.

France joins now-uninhibited favorite United States, Lithuania and Serbia as the four finalists.

The French will take on Serbia on Friday, which itself pulled off a mild surprise earlier Wednesday. Behind 23 points from Milos Teodosic, the Serbians advanced with an 84-56 trouncing of Brazil. Brazil had previously beaten Serbia in group play—just as Spain had France. 

In the first matchup, the co-favorites dictated the pace throughout and dominated defensively en route to an 88-64 win. Five Spanish players scored in double figures, using their size and cohesive game plan to dissect a France team struggling to score without Tony Parker.

"Sometimes in the group phase match-ups, you don't want to show everything because you might see those teams down the road and you still need to surprise them," forward Rudy Fernandez said before the game, per FIBA. "I'm sure they (France) will bring new things to the table and we need to be ready for them."

From the opening tipoff, it was clear whatever adjustments France made were working. 

Andres Kudacki/Associated Press

France opened the game with an 11-2 run that left the Madrid crowd stunned, dropping a little inkling that an upset was far from out of the question. Boris Diaw seemed unseasonably hot from three-point range, bigs Joffrey Lauvergne and Rudy Gobert out-hustled the Gasol brothers for rebounds, and the French defensive effort seemed more locked in than it has the entire tournament.

While Spain was able to come back with a run of its own to tie the game 15-15 after the first quarter, it never felt like a controlled effort. With open shots going off the rim and France using its own NBA talent to create more havoc than usual, Spain consistently failed to get into an offensive rhythm.

France retook the lead at the beginning of the second quarter and halted any extended Spanish run to go into the halftime break ahead 35-28. Gobert, who finished the game with five points and 13 rebounds, started the run with his only two baskets of the game. The Jazz center played a critical crunch-time role Wednesday after typically ceding the final moments to the more experienced Lauvergne.

The only significant signs of Spanish life came in the third quarter. No doubt embarrassed at its first-half effort, Spain dominated both ends of the floor after the break. It held France to only seven points against 15 of its own and finally seemed to be dictating the pace again. If one were to draw an analogy, it felt like the United States turning on its jets after a sloppy 20 minutes the way it has so many times in this tournament.

Only it wasn't meant to be. 

France again struck the first blow in the fourth and never trailed after the eight-minute mark of the quarter. What will ultimately go down as one of the biggest wins in French basketball history will also be perhaps the worst loss ever for Spain.

Playing before a wildly supportive home crowd and with a majority of its Olympic roster, many viewed the World Cup as Spain's opportunity to finally get over the U.S. hump. Instead, it leaves with disappointment and a bitter two-year wait before it'll have an international stage large enough to atone for Wednesday's loss.

Follow Tyler Conway (@tylerconway22) on Twitter