Turkey stumbled on Wednesday against Yugoslavia, the defending world championship titlist and the team that stopped them from winning the 2001 European Championship.

It was a huge letdown following the euphoria of Saturday when, after losing its first two games, Turkey defeated Lebanon.

After Saturday's victory, fans marched from Conseco Field-house to a festival sponsored by the American Turkish Association of Indiana at Veterans Memorial Park north of the Indiana War Memorial.

They stopped at Monument Circle, chanting and singing "12 Dev Adam" (12 Giant Men), a basketball anthem by the Turkish rock group Athena.

It was one more cheering chapter in a week that began with the arrival of thousands of fans by train from Chicago and plane from New York, impressing Hoosier basketball natives with their songs and flag-waving exuberance.

"We could use about 5,000 of them in the RCA Dome for the Colts," said radio host Pat Sullivan on WIBC-1070 AM.

Ahmet Fer, the Turkish Association's general secretary, tried to be diplomatic.

"We do not want to celebrate just the Turkish team's efforts," he said. "There will be winners and losers. But in the end, we would like to celebrate all the athletes who are in Indianapolis."

But the team got the message, said Ersal Ozdemir, an Indianapolis general contractor and the team's local escort.

"The fans were very emotional, and that made a big difference to the team," he said. "They didn't just watch. They sang; there were cheers."

He said some fans had a difficult time entering the country because of tightened security after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

But the warmth of the Turks impressed some Americans who didn't know them well before. Turkan Yalcin, a local real estate agent and one of the festival's organizers, talked with local police working security at the event.

"They said, 'The Turkish people changed our image of Turkey and of Muslim people.' "

How do you explain these fans, she was asked.

"Turkish people are kind of crazy. We're a happy people. We have some economic problems, but we take sports seriously."

She called her sister in Istanbul with updates.

"In Turkey, life just stopped. Everybody was watching these games. We were on the Internet and the telephone telling them what was going on, the scores and what was happening behind the scenes."

It hurt, losing to Yugoslavia again. Many of the out-of-town fans had left earlier to get back to their own homes and jobs.

So it was left to the local fans to grieve a little -- and hope some more -- to the tune of their unofficial theme song:

"Twelve giant men, You're going to win again," they sang.

"You'll win again, giant men. And we'll be with you always."