SER – Dragicevic crossing his fingers, hopes for Serbia call-up

BELGRADE (EuroBasket) - Red Star Belgrade’s Tadija Dragicevic has enjoyed a lot of bright moments for his club this season.

The MVP of the Adriatic League’s regular season, the 22-year-old Serbian wasn’t able to lead his club past Olimpija in the play-offs.

The Ljubljana outfit won the last two games of their quarter-final to clinch a 2-1 series victory.

Dragicevic knows his best years are ahead of him, though, and he would like nothing more than to represent his country, though he accepts that breaking into the national team of Serbia is as hard as it comes in Europe.

"I try to play as well as possible to let the national team coach know about my capabilities,” he said to Basketball World News.

“I hope coach Dušan Ivkovic will spot me. But we shall see."

Three years ago, Dragicevic and Serbia finished third in Turkey with the under-20 national team and last year, he won gold in Slovenia and Italy.

"We had a really great generation which won almost everything that was possible to win,” he said proudly.

“What I hope the most is that the senior national team will follow the results of the younger teams.

“In recent years, the senior team has been in a big crisis. I hope it is going to start changing as fast as this year."

Serbia are to play Italy, Hungary, Bulgaria and Finland in EuroBasket 2009 qualifying games later this year.

As for Red Star, Dragicevic is hopeful for the future.

"It is true, we have a young and talented squad,” he said.

“At first, the results were not as important because our main goal was to get the young players experience.

“Later we saw that we could be very good this season, although it was also very obvious that we are lacking experience.

“Some of the players are only playing in their second, third professional seasons. We need experience to get even better, and maybe another center to boost our game."

Luka Maselj
FIBA