SRB - Ivkovic cuts trio; Tripkovic and Milicic also out

BELGRADE (2010 FIBA World Championship) - Serbia coach Dusan Ivkovic has dashed the hopes of Zoran Erceg, Mladen Jeremic and Luka Bogdanovic of playing at the FIBA World Championship by releasing each from the national team squad.

The three have been let go ahead of the Blues’ trip to Italian Folgaria, where the Serbians will hold a training camp from Sunday to July 24.

The setback will be another huge disappointment for Jeremic, who was one of Serbia’s gold-medal winning players at the FIBA U19 World Championship three years ago.

Erceg didn’t make the squad for EuroBasket 2009 following a season when he had a lack of playing time and has again been left off.

DKV Joventut forward Bogdanovic withdrew from last year’s squad due to illness and now also won’t play in Turkey.

Serbia will go to Folgaria without their captain Nenad Krstic, who can't participate in this phase of training due to an agreement shared by FIBA and the NBA on the duration of national team preparations.

While waiting for the captain to join them later, the Serbs won't have Uros Tripkovic in Turkey due to injury, while Darko Milicic has claimed in an interview that his NBA club, the Minnesota Timberwolves, did not want him to play for the national team this summer despite his desire to do so.

Milicic hasn’t played for Serbia in an official competition since EuroBasket 2007.

Serbia will take on Argentina, Australia, Germany, Angola and Jordan in Group A of the FIBA World Championship.

Those Preliminary Round games will be held in Kayseri.

Shortened list of Serbian team: Milos Teodosic, Stefan Markovic, Bojan Popovic, Ivan Paunic, Milenko Tepic, Aleksandar Rasic, Dragan Milosavljevic, Marko Keselj, Nemanja Bjelica, Ivan Radenovic, Milan Macvan, Dusko Savanovic, Novica Velickovic, Boban Marjanovic, Miroslav Raduljica and Kosta Perovic.

FIBA