Basketball club Cedevita Olimpija has extended the contract with Jurica Golemac, one of the most talented head coaches in Europe, and Golemac will remain on the Dragons’ bench until the end of the 2022/23 season, with the possibility of an extension for the 2023/24 season.
Jurica Golemac sat on the coaching chair of the Cedevita Olimpija team last January. Golemac is one of the most talented European basketball experts, who progresses from season to season, and together with the Dragons he managed a big throw in the 2020/21 season, as Slovenian fans can watch the fights of the best 16 teams of the European 7DAYS EuroCup for the first time in history. At the same time, with the Cedevita Olimpija team last September, Golemac made sure that the title of Super Cup champion returned to the cones after 2017.
Cedevita Olimpija has extended its cooperation with Golemac until the end of the 2022/23 season, with the possibility of an extension for the 2023/24 season.
Jurica Golemac started his coaching career in 2013 in Cibona as an assistant to Slaven Rimac. Already in his first year, he won the ABA League title with the Zagreb club. He also gained coaching experience as an assistant to Elias Zouros in the Georgian men’s national team. As a head coach, he tested himself for the first time in Šentjur’s Tajfun and after taking over the team, after not the best start to the season, he led to the final eighth place in the Nova KBM League. In 2017, Golemac sat on the bench of the then Sixt Primorska, and in the first season he led Koper to the title of Spar Cup champion, the ABA League 2 final and the semifinals of the Slovenian national championship.
The turning point in which Golemac showed all the luxury of his coaching talent was the 2018/19 season, when he won the ABA 2 League title, the Slovenian national title, and the cup and super cup title with the Koper ‘tigers’. The 2019/20 season, now Koper Primorska, also started excellently, winning another consecutive Super Cup title under the tutelage of Golemec, and until the break-up of the team it was considered the biggest surprise of the new season in the ABA League. After the financial problems of the Koper club, Golemac terminated his contract with Koper Primorska on December 20 last year.
Golemac came to Slovenia in 1997, where he first played for the young team of Cedevita Olimpija, and in his career he defended the colors of the then Union Olimpija, Slovan and Novo mesto’s Krka on Slovenian soil. He has proven himself on the international scene, among other things, in the jerseys of European giants such as Efes Pilsen, Cibona, Virtus Roma, Panathinaikos and Alba Berlin. The fact that as a naturalized basketball player in 2009 he also participated in EuroBasket in Poland and with the fourth place was one of the creators of the greatest success of the Slovenian national basketball team until 2017, when Slovenia sat on the European basketball throne. He collected 17 official appearances for the Slovenian national team.
The Power Forward said goodbye to professional basketball in the Krka jersey, and for now he has proven himself as a coach with a complete commitment to basketball, analyticalness, ingenuity and hard and systematic work, in which he wants to leave as little as possible to chance.
Davor Užbinec, director of Cedevita Olimpija:
“I am very happy and satisfied that we have reached an agreement to extend the contract with head coach Jurica Golemac. We have been talking about this possibility with Jurica for a long time. We believe that together we can write a very successful story. At Club, we see him as someone who can stay with us in the long run, and we all want to continue the story we started writing last season. Regardless of all the circumstances that have hindered us in the last year, we continue to operate successfully and do everything to ensure that our club is superbly organized. We are making progress day by day, but I believe we will grow together from season to season. Jurica is an excellent coach, which he proved before coming to Cedevita Olimpija, and he has only strengthened the fact in the last year since he has been with us. The players are progressing from training to training, the team is growing with him, and Jurica has fitted in perfectly with our and his club, as we must not forget that already as a player in Ljubljana he left a deep mark. By agreeing to extend the contract, we have proven what we always say. We want stability and continuity, regardless of good or slightly worse results. I believe that in terms of competition and organization, we will only rise, and achieve all the goals we set at the beginning of our project.”
Sani Bečirović, sports director of Cedevita Olimpija:
“We are extremely pleased that we managed to reach an agreement with Jurica to extend the cooperation. Jurica has proven himself in the past as an extraordinary expert and one of the most talented head coaches in Europe. We can say without hesitation that Jurica is currently the best Slovenian basketball coach, and given the fact that he is still a young coach who can only progress from season to season, we believe that our team will grow with him. The results of the teams he has led so far speak for themselves, and last but not least, he has already proven his knowledge on the bench of Cedevita Olimpija. Regardless of the fact that the 2020/21 season is specific in several respects, all players have accepted his philosophy and game system, and in every game and also off the court we can see that the players are breathing for each other, and this is the most important thing. We have set a a long-term story, and we all know what our long-term goals are. I believe that we will look forward to many successes together with Jurica.”
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