| RETURN OF THE OUTCAST. POLAND 2009: Coach R goes "SmallBall". Public reacts. |
| Written by Marjan Crnogaj |
| Wednesday, 20 January 2010 17:14 |
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 KASUN & VUJCIC - WILL WE SEE THEM TOGETHER AGAIN? ONLY COACH R KNOWS... After surviving a 14 point halftime deficit vs newcomers Macedonia and 2 and a half games filled with a lack of defensive presence and clear offensive struggle to find the open man we all know that Alan Anderson would really be just too much for this Croatian NT. Tooo much. Either being absolutely crazy, or unbelievably lucky, Croatian NT coach Jasmin Repesa managed to pass Group A by making a bunch of very disputable choices and wrong decisions with completely wrong timing. Letting alone not defensively covering the competition’s leading scorer Lior Elyahu with Marin Rozic, benching Kresimir Loncar for most of the game vs. Greece, Repesa also managed to do the unthinkable by totally separating the potentially most dominant frontcourt pair of this year’s competition, Nikola Vujcic and Mario Kasun. The ingeniousness of this coaching acrobatics was most evident during the game vs. one of the world's top teams, Greece. While at separate times left alone to guard both Bourousis and Baby Shaq both Vujcic and Kasun were foul-prone and offensively ineffective. If they both played at the same time, the development of events would have been completely opposite and the previous sentence would refer to their opponents. Croatia has yet to face France and Germany in the quarterfinal stage of Eurobasket 2009. Even being only one win away from the quarterfinal game, this year’s Croatian NT leaves a bitter taste with it’s game approach, actual game performance and postgame comments. This leads us to a crucial question: Are we there to play basketball or to make a result? I think that right now coach R has this mind set primarily on making the Result. But this will be very hard to achieve with this roster without making right adjustments at right times.  |