BELGRADE, Aug 27 - A timid second-round exit ended Serbia & Montenegro's medal hopes at the men's world basketball championship in Japan and completed a four-year barren spell in major competitions for the 2002 champions.

The Serbs, who won their fifth world title in Indianapolis as Yugoslavia, looked a spent force in Japan and few basketball experts at home were surprised when they started their title defence with an 82-75 defeat to unheralded Nigeria.

Wins against Lebanon and Venezuela briefly restored hopes of a podium finish but losses to France, Olympic champions Argentina then Spain in the last 16 showed the once mighty basketball nation no longer strikes fear in the hearts of their rivals.

Hall of Famer Drazen Dalipagic, who won the 1978 world championship, the 1980 Olympic gold medal and three European championships with the former Yugoslavia, believes the Japan failure has marked the end of an era.

"This is a team with limited abilities and incapable of achieving better results. The worrying thing is that (coach) Dragan Sakota had put together the best team he was able to," Dalipagic told Belgrade daily Kurir.

The decline started with a sixth-place finish in the 2003 European championship in Sweden and the alarm bells went off when Serbia & Montenegro came a shocking 11th at the 2004 Olympic Games in Athens.

POOR EXCUSE

The Serbs were missing many leading players in both competitions but that turned out to be a poor excuse after they failed to reach the quarter-finals of last year's European championship as the host nation.

With seven squabbling NBA players on their roster, Serbia & Montenegro had to sit and watch the final rounds after being blown away by Spain and eventual bronze medal winners France.

Towering centre Darko Milicic and Igor Rakocevic were the only two from that group who returned for the Japan tournament and surprisingly, neither was disappointed with the early exit.

"We are happy with the result, this is a moderately successful achievement. We have created a good atmosphere and restored the team spirit," Rakocevic told Belgrade media.

Milicic, who plays for NBA outfit Orlando Magic, said: "We did not let ourselves down because we were up against some of the strongest teams in the tournament."

The most damning testimony of Serbia's flailing basketball power, however, was made by Sakota himself: "We could have done a little bit better if we had been a little less scared of the opposition."