Bogdanovic makes another step forward in his career
Croatian NT completed relatively successful performance on Adecco Cup with 80:71 loss to Serbia in the final game of the competition in Ljubljana, Slovenia. In the battle of 2011 EuroBasket contenders both coaches instructed their players to “search and execute easy basket opportunities early on.”
Croatia led by as much as 67:57 just 7 minutes before the final whistle before allowing an almost unbelivable 23:4 run by Serbia after the time-out called by Serbian NT head coach Dusan Ivkovic.
Croatian C Ante Tomic pounded the glass at both end of the court and ended up the contest with 13 points and 14 boards, but made his fifth foul on Tournament MVP Nenad Krstic with five minutes left.
PG Dontaye Draper again had a very good game and did a much better job of controlling Croatian NT play and creating opportunities under pressure than his counterparts Popovic (went into the foul-trouble early on) and Stipcevic.
Nets’ 2011 draftee and Fenerbahce star G/F Bojan Bogdanovic again led Croatia in scoring with 17 points. Bogdanovic completed the Tournament as the best scorer having scored 53 points in 3 games which is an 17.7 ppg average.
Croatian swingman has been named to the All Tournament Team along with G Goran Dragic (Slovenia), G Milos Teodosic (Serbia), F Mirza Teletovic (Bosnia) and C Nenad Krstic (Serbia).
Adriatic League and Croatian League MVP PF Luka Zoric was (again) relatively unimpressive – on numerous occasions he was to hesitant to take the shot.
General impression is that Croatian NT played much better offense when the ball was in the “flow” rather than in “post up” positions. Defense seems to be in place with the room for improvement in the “help defense” area.
Coach Vrankovic has quality alternations for each of the positions. His main focus in the upcoming weeks should be to boost the quality of the frontcourt play which should really be one of the key factors for Croatia in the upcoming EuroBasket.
