Liman earned their place in Masters in Lausanne in August this year. Guys from Novi Sad convincingly won the tournament and showed again they are a really serious team. They rose from the dead after defeating in the final of the last Masters in Manila against their compatriots Ub.
The fact that one of their biggest star Strahinja Stojacic will miss competition due to injury struck the Ub guys. They simply couldn’t show their maximum potential and they suffered a hard defeat against the Antwerp quarterfinal. Belgium team, led by their best player Thibaut Vervoort, shined and destroyed the Serbian team in the last couple of minutes of the game.
Liman, on the other hand, survived a clash against Latvian side Riga in the quarterfinal and clinch a 19-17 win. Riga didn’t let Liman make a bigger advantage throughout the whole game and their main player Nauris Miezis aka “The Maze’’ showed a very solid performance. Liman later passed through another challenging test against Belgian Antwerp with a score of 21-13. Thibaut Vervoort and his teammates looked very tired and they couldn’t sustain the tempo of the Serbian team.
Deciding game of the tournament had a very similar scenario. Amsterdam, who beat American Princeton in the quarterfinal and Lithuanian Sakai in the semifinal, was surprisingly in the final. Amsterdam looked completely exhausted and gave a little resistance to Mihailo Vasic and company. Nebojsa Kilian scored from behind the arc to secure the 21-12 win. The audience was supporting their compatriots all the time.
Stefan Kojic was the best scorer in the competition with 30 points. Aleksandar Ratkov also played a big role and gave a big contribution to winning the trophy with 25 rebounds overall. With this first place, Liman joined Ub, Jeddah, and San Juan as teams already qualified for the fourth Masters of the season. The third Masters in World Tour will be played in Prague, the capital of the Chech Republic, on July 30.
source: fiba.basketball
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