Confident Repesa Leads Croatia

Croatia boss Jasmin Repesa is full of self belief.

He never doubted, for example, when he first got into coaching at the age of 22 that he would reach the big time.

“I believed that from the first day,” he said. “That’s why I started thinking about this job so young.”

That sort of confidence is what his players will need if they are going to realize their
Mario Kasun was one of the keys to Croatia finishing atop Group B.

dream of winning a gold medal at this year’s EuroBasket, or if they are to qualify for the Olympics.

Whatever self-belief they might have had going into the tournament looked to be damaged on Monday night as they walked off the court 85-77 losers to Latvia.

It was clearly restored 24 hours later after they pulled away from Portugal to win 90-68 and should be at an all-time high after a win over World Champion Spain.

Not once has Repesa wavered in his mission as coach of Croatia, since taking the reins of the team after EuroBasket 2005.

The National Team spirit was at an all-time low after the tournament because they had, somewhat controversially, suffered an overtime defeat to Spain in the quarter-finals.

Neven Spajiha was the coach of that team and an excellent one as well, but he lost his composure near the end of that Spain game.

Spajiha ran onto the court to remonstrate with the referees who had called far more fouls against his team than Spain.

The players felt victimized and clearly lost their focus in the next game against Slovenia, which they lost.

Slovenia, not Croatia, went to the 2006 FIBA World Championship.

Repesa had ample reason to lose his cool this summer when Nikola Vujcic, the captain of that 2005 team, announced he wasn’t playing this summer.

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source : eurobasket2007.org