Cedevita signings click, hoping to be 'even better'

Cedevita Olimpija Ljubljana has escaped from the Group B cellar and is looking optimistic about the remainder of the regular season thanks to back-to-back victories, the last of which came on the road against ratiopharm Ulm behind its veteran in-season addition Zoran Dragic.

Cedevita and Ulm offered an extremely exciting game to all basketball fans in their Round 13 clash last week. It was not the first time they did so this season. When they previously faced each other back in Round 4 in November, Ulm prevailed 96-101 in a double-overtime thriller that saw Ulm blow a 21-point lead and ended up featuring five scorers with at least 20 points.

Since then, Cedevita has made some significant changes in its roster. Its latest addition was Slovenian guard Dragic, who joined the team early in January after leaving Kaunas, where he played for Zalgiris in the Turkish Airlines Euroleague. In just his fourth game with his new teammates, Dragic proved his signing was a great choice by pushing Cedevita to a 96-104 road win.

“We changed the team during the season and now every game is important, as we don’t have time to practice. Every game, we are trying to get better chemistry. The guys are believing in each other and that’s the most important," recognized Cedevita head coach Jurica Goleac after the game against Ulm.

Dragic was his team’s top scorer and performer in the victory in Ulm, a place he knows well after spending half of the 2019-20 season there. Against his former club, Dragic finished with 20 points, 5 rebounds and 3 assists for a PIR of 25 and was the go-to guy when the game was on the line in the last quarter.

"It was a very tough game. We know that Ulm is playing great basketball and we just fought till the end. First half we let them score too much, easy baskets, and in the second half we played defense, we stuck together like a team, and we won", he said a few minutes after the final buzzer.

Besides his good stats, Dragic showed up when his team needed him most. He scored 8 of Cedevita’s first 15 points to get his team going and fuel a 10-15 lead midway through the first quarter. Late in the game, right after Thomas Klepeisz made it a one-possession game, 92-94, with only 2:26 remaining, Dragic took over from behind the arc and drilled a pair of three-pointers that sealed the outcome and helped the visitors win the head-to-head tiebreaker too.

"For sure for the fans it was a great basketball game, almost 200 points. For the coach, is not so great, but there were great individual players on the court and they scored amazing shots", reflected Golemac on the high-scoring affair. "In the end, we were luckier, we scored some tough shots in the end.”

With its second win in a row and third on the road this season, Cedevita not only improved to 5-7 and got closer to the middle of the pack in Group B, but looks more confidently at its future, knowing that the new roster seems to have clicked already. Dragic seemed to think that way too:

"We have a great group of guys and we are just trying to play the best basketball we can. Now we feel each other and I hope we can be even better."