By Johnny Askounis/ info@eurohoops.net
Among the three lasting originals of the Basketball Champions League alongside former champions La Laguna Tenerife and AEK Betsson, Filou Oostende celebrated a milestone on Tuesday evening in Poland.
In Gameday 3 of Group B of the Regular Season against King Wilki Morskie Szczecin, Dario Gjergja emerged as the second person to coach 100 games in the league. Of course, the first was Txus Vidorreta, the boss of Tenerife.
“The team is more important to me and will always be,” he stressed after his side snapped a seven-game losing streak in BCL road games with a confident team display in Netto Arena.
“I think it is much more important that it is 100 games with the same club,” added the head coach of Oostende during the postgame press conference, “That means that people in my organization, where I work, believe in me. They stay behind me. I give them a big credit for that and thank them for the chance to promote both myself and our team in Europe.”
Gjergja, 49, might be shy of matching international headlines concerning Vidorreta as the play-caller of Oostende in the BNXT League, but the Champions League constantly offering opportunities to clubs from additional European countries remains huge in such environments. A basketball mastermind, an expert in motivating both youngsters and more experienced players, a genuine student of basketball, and a loyal servant of the sport, much like the native of Bilbao. Feeling at home with the Belgian club and behind a successful program in place since 2011, overall contributions in multiple areas are impressive, rivaling those of coaches at more popular organizations.
Reducing it all to BCL wins, his 45 are the third most in league history.
The road to 100
Back where it all started, Gjergja became an assistant coach at Zagreb in 2001. He started his coaching career at 25. He went on to Cibona. To Ural Great Perm in Russia and Spirou Charleroi in Belgium for more experience as an assistant. He also worked with junior national teams in Croatia. Between 2009 and 2011, he was the head coach of Liege, starting to put down more roots in Belgium.
Since 2011, he has been the head coach of Oostende, then carrying Telenet as the name sponsor. Becoming a Belgian citizen, he also took over the senior national team of the country in 2018, a few years after assisting Velimir Perasovic at the senior national team of Croatia through the 2015 EuroBasket.
Over 13 years the Oostende boss, Gjergja guided his side to the domestic league championship every single year, besides lifting additional domestic trophies, seven Cups, and five Super Cups. Last season, Oostende also won the BNXT League for the first time in team history, after capturing the BNXT Supercup for three years in a row, since the creation of the competitions pairing the top-tier teams of Belgium and the Netherlands in 2021.
Back in the 2016-17 season, the everlasting champions of Belgium were among the teams of the inaugural edition of the Champions League and never looked back. After three bids ending in the Regular Season, Oostende reached the Round of 16 in 2020 and resurfaced at the same stage in 2022. Over the last two exhibitions, the extremely familiar Play-In stage marked the end of the continental run.
The task at hand combines developing numerous promising youngsters and lifting trophies at the domestic and regional levels. Moving deeper into the BCL season would be a brilliant incorporation into an already successful program. His 100th game as a head coach was also the 100th for the team in the top-tier club continental competition of FIBA Europe. Three more are guaranteed in the bottom half of the double-legged round-robin schedule of Group B, but Oostende is certainly looking for more in the ninth installment of the Champions League.
Photo Credit: FIBA