Back-to-back U18 European champs Pecarski, Petrusev out for U19 glory for Serbia

BELGRADE (Serbia) - Marko Pecarski and Filip Petrusev collected back-to-back FIBA U18 European Championships for Serbia and now the dynamic duo look to get their country back to the top of the world as they shoot for the FIBA U19 Basketball World Cup 2019 title.

Pecarski and Petrusev played a year up in winning the 2017 U18 continental crown and then both were named to the All-Star Five last summer with Pecarski winning the MVP award. Both will be making their FIBA youth World Cup debuts in Greece and have Serbian fans dreaming of a second U19 crown following the 2007 trophy.

"We have two more friendlies in Crete, against the hosts Greece and the USA, which we will use to get as prepared for the event as we can be," Serbia coach Aleksandar Bucan said. "I'm expecting an improvement in team play before the championship starts, because we only had seven days of camp with the full squad. My staff has a lot of confidence in this team that will represent us at the World Cup, a team composed of players born in 2000, without a single younger player, which has never happened so far at the U19 events in Serbia's and Yugoslavia's history."

Pecarski and Petrusev make up an intimidating front court but they are not the only high level players on Bucan's team. Teaming up as a third leader on the team is shooting guard Zoran Paunovic, a major scoring threat who averaged 16.7 points, 4.1 rebounds and 3.4 assists to go with the combined 45.7 points, 19.7 rebounds, 4.0 assists, 2.1 steals and 2.0 blocks from the two big men. Another of the nine players back from the U18 team last summer is Uros Trifunovic, who paced the team in assists with 4.4 to go with 10.0 points while captain Dalibor Ilic collected 9.3 points, 6.0 rebounds and 2.9 assists.

Bucan did make three changes to his squad from last summer with the additions of Aleksa Cubic, Lazar Grbovic and Ognjen Micovic. All three will be making their debuts in Serbia's national colors. Cubic averaged more than 20 minutes in Serbian KLS top flight since late April for Sloboda Uzice while Micovic led the Serbian U19 JLS league in scoring (22.1 points per game), assists (7.4 assists per game) and steals (2.3 steals per game) to go with 4.2 rebounds.

Serbia start the quest for the title against China on June 29 and will follow that with a game against Puerto Rico a day later before taking on France on July 2 in their Group D finale.

FIBA