"It's not exactly the game we wanted to be playing on the final day, but then we had to win it any which way."

France shrugged off the absence of Sandrine Gruda to overcome Serbia 88-74 and win the 7-8 place classification game at the 2014 FIBA World Championship for Women last Sunday.

"We'll go back to the drawing board and look at what we did wrong in this tournament. That's a part of the process this team will go through."

Ana Maria Cata-Chitiga's 16 points with 13 rebounds made up for Gruda's confinement to the bench due to knee tendonitis as the Les Bleus clawed their way back from an indifferent first quarter.

"We wanted to sign off the tournament with a win," said France captain Celine Dumerc, who had 12 points to go with 5 assists.

"We need to do it to prepare for next year's EuroBasket (which will be jointly hosted by Hungary and Romania). Our target is to take France into the (2016 Rio) Olympics," added the 32-year-old guard.

Ana Dabovic had another high performance game for Serbia with 19 points.

"We achieved more than we expected although looking back we feel we could have finished higher. We'll see where we went wrong," she said.

(Source: 2014 FIBA World Cup Official Website)