By Rigas Dardalis/ dardalis@eurohoops.net
The roster of Croatian national team was always full of individual talent, but somehow that didn’t translate to team success. In Eurobasket 2013 after the first game and the defeat by Spain, everyone believed that once more Croatia will underachieve. However, specially after beating host country Slovenia, the team of coach Repesa seems ready to do much better than recent history suggests.
After the practice in Ljubljana we asked Panathinaikos’ point guard Roko Leni Ukic to describe what’s the situation in the team and Croatia seems to be on the right path: “We play very well lately. The first game in the tournament (against Spain) was a disaster, but then we played very good. Specially in the last two games we had excellent defense, we beat Slovenia which is one of the best teams and the host of the tournament. We have confidence, we have a young team, a lot of energy and if we continue this way we are going to be competitive and able to play against everybody”.
It will be interesting to see how Croatia will react specially in the game against Greece, which may at that point be crucial for both teams and their quarterfinal classification: “Ι know pretty much all the Greek players, but they are also famous in Europe and lot of them are my teammates in Panathinaikos. To be honest we are not thinking about Greece right now, because it’s our last game. So we have to be focused first in Finland and Italy. We have six days until then, our focus in the first game but for sure we are looking forward to play against Greece and it’s going to be an interesting game”.
His opinion about Greece isn’t clear at this point and he knows that Eurobasket tournaments are always unpredictable: “I didn’t see them during the tournament, we play against them in a preparation game and it was very close. Obviously they have a lot of talent, they have a lot of the best players in Europe, but playing on the national team is something different. It’s not only a matter of quality, but also a matter of energy, individual aspiration or one singe detail in a game can change everything. It’s not a regular game, like in Euroleague or somewhere else. That’s why the competition is so unpredictable. You may have a better roster, but if you don’t have enough energy or enough enthusiasm it will not be enough”.
As for his club, Greek champions Panathinaikos, this season can be even better than the previous one: “Our goal is winning everything. We have a great season last year, on paper now we are even stronger. We have to create the same chemistry that we had last year and just prove that we are a great team. I really believe it and I think that it’s going to be a good year”.