By Antonis Stroggylakis/info@eurohoops.net
Montenegro officially becomes the first national team to name EuroLeague players in its preliminary squad ahead of the World Cup qualifiers.
Bojan Dubljevic (Valencia), Milko Bjelica (Crvena Zvezda), Marko Todorovic (Khimki Moscow) and Dino Radonjic (Real Madrid) are included in the list of names that coach Zvezdan Mitrovic announced.
Nikola Vucevic’s name is absent, as expected.
Montenegro will face Spain in Podgorica on November 23 and Belarus in Minsk three days later. Then on February 23 and 26 2018, it will play against EuroBasket champions Slovenia at home and the “Rojas” once more, this time in Spain.
Thus it remains to be seen if EuroLeague players will participate in these game since the championship’s schedule conflicts with the World Cup Qualifiers calendar.
EuroLeague CEO Jordi Bertomeu has said that there won’t be any sanctions against the players who choose to join their national teams during the season and that he expects that the same will be applied to those who will choose to skip the World Cup qualifiers and instead opt to stay with their clubs.
Here’s the complete Montenegrin preliminary squad, per FIBA.
| Montenegro preliminary squad for World Cup Qualifiers against Spain and Belarus | ||||
| Filip Barovic | Milko Bjelica | Ognjen Carapic | Bojan Dubljevic | Nemanja Djurisic |
| Aleksa Ilic | Nikola Ivanovic | Ivan Maras | Vladimir Mihailovic | Starovlah Milic |
| Derek Needham | Danilo Nikolic | Zoran Nikolic | Vukota Pavic | Nikola Pavlicevic |
| Petar Popovic | Dino Radoncic | Nemanja Radovic | Sead Sehovic | Suad Sehovic |
| Blagota Sekulic | Marko Simonovic | Marko Todorovic | Nemanja Vranjes | |