Serbian National Basketball team is among the most popular in the country and expectations from the basketball public grew when All-NBA center Nikola Jokić announced that he will be a part of the team for the World Championships in China this year. Also, there are great expectations from the team that will represent Serbian students at the Fifth European Universities Games in Belgrade 2020. But, how would the Serbian student dream team look like?

To make the challenge more difficult, because almost everyone participated at the Summer Universiades, we decide to take into an account only those with longer student CV´s.

Playmakers

Biggest competition in this team would be for a playmaker position and it would be an extraordinary challenge to pick the brain of the team. Some would say logically, but you see that competition is tough on each position.

Serbia basketball legend and a man whose nickname is „Professional Trophy Lifter“, Pera Božić won 18 trophies with Partizan Belgrade and was a part of the Euroleague Final4 in 2010 would probably be the first pick. He is a record holder in Serbian University sport as well because he played quite some time in the Belgrade Universities League.

Pride of the University of Niš, Stefan Jović would surely compete for a place in the team. He was supposed to be part of his University team in 2014 at the European Universities Games in Rotterdam but slightly before the competition he was invited to be part of the nationa team at the World Championship. Since then he as been part of the team and is currently vice-champion of the world from 2014, Olympic games from 2016 and European from 2017.

Current ABA League champion and a playmaker for Red Star Belgrade, Filip Čović would conclude the list. He played for a couple of years for the Faculty of Organizational Science and lead them to trophies in both domestic and international competition. His ability to play big matches would be of use for the student dream team.

Guards

Here we have to „return“ a couple of players from the 3×3 Basket into the world of basketball. Guys that played for their universities, but turned to the world of 3×3 Basket and are among the best in the business. But, lets start with those players that still play basketball accross Europe.

Nikola Kalinić is one of the best players of Fenerbahce, turkish giants. Since his student days you could see the passion he has still. At the time he played for the Unviersity of Novi Sad, until an injury took him away from the student sport. Like Stefan Jović he is currently vice-champion of World and Olympics, and because of an injury he couldn´t help his team at the European Championship two years ago.

Basketball player for Varese and occasional player of Serbia, Aleksa Avramović was one the deadliest scorers when he played for the team of Faculty of Sport and Physical Education from University of Belgrade. He kept his instict in Italy, and in the Serbian national team. During FIBA World Champioship Qualifiers he had some great games and we hope that is only the beginning.

Two players that we would gladly see that are currently playing 3×3 basket come from Novi sad and we had a chance to see them in student league. First is an absoulute legend of 3×3 basketball and currently top ranked player – Dušan Domović Bulut. He was recently drafted in the Big3 league.

Second person was officially 3×3 basket World Tour MVP in 2017 and took over the first place from Dušan. Stefan „Mr Robot“ Stojačić won everything there is in u-18, u-19 and u-20 competition, but he quit his basketball career due to education.

Centres

Centre position is the weekest for this team and only one players is eligible to play for the team.

One more member of the Serbian team that are current vice-champions of teh world, Olympic Games and Europe was registered to play for University of Singidunum. Miroslav Raduljica in his national team career played a great role in every succes that Serbia had in the last couple of years would surely be first solution for the centre.

We hope that next year Belgrade crowd will have the opportunity to see basketball players that will be a part of their national team in the years to come.