Ivan Paunić

Ivan Paunić
Player information
birthday	January 27, 1987
place of birth	Belgrade, SFR Yugoslavia
size	195 cm
position	Shooting Guard
Club information
society	Montakit Fuenlabrada
league	League ACB
Jersey number	31
Clubs as active
2004–2006 KK Partizan Belgrade 2005–2006 → KK Mega Vizura 2006 → KK Mornar Bar 2006–2008 KK Vojvodina Novi Sad 2008–2009 BASE Oostende 2009–2010 Aris Thessaloniki 2010–2012 BK Nizhny Novgorod 2012 Virtus Bologna 2012 BK Azovmasch Mariupol 2013 Lagun Aro GBC 2013–2014 Baloncesto Fuenlabrada 2014 BK Astana 2014–2015 KK Budućnost Podgorica Since 2015 Montakit Fuenlabrada 00000 00000 00000 00000 00000 0
National team
2009–2012	Serbia

Ivan Paunić medal table
Basketball (men)
Serbia
European basketball championship
silver	2009 Poland

Ivan Paunić ( Serbian - Cyrillic Иван Паунић ; born January 27, 1987 in Belgrade , SR Serbia ) is a Serbian basketball player . The multiple youth and junior European champion played in his native Serbia and Montenegro until 2008 before moving abroad and so far played in Belgium , Greece , Italy , Russia , Ukraine and Kazakhstan . Since the season 2015/16 plays Paunić that the Serbian Mr. selection in the 2009 European Championship finals was European vice-champion, again in the Spanish ACB league , this time for the club Montakit Fuenlabrada.

Career

As a teenager, Paunić had already completed individual appearances in the men's team of Master Partizan Belgrade in the top national league and the supranational Adriatic Basketball League (ABA League) when he played with the Serbian-Montenegrin youth national team at the U18 European Championship finals in 2005 in front of a home crowd European champion was. The team with tournament MVP Dragan Labović , Milenko Tepić and Miloš Teodosić remained undefeated during the entire tournament and brought the title of this age group to Belgrade for the first time since winning the tournament in 1988 and the dissolution of old Yugoslavia . At the following season Paunić was loaned out to local rivals KK Mega, still as that season Avala Ada changed its name , and played at the end of the season for KK Mornar in Bar in Montenegro , which declared its independence in the meantime. With the Serbian junior national team, which won a medal for the first time in 2005 when the youth national team won the title in the U20 age group competition that has existed since 2000, Paunić achieved the first two titles at the U20 European Championship finals in 2006 and 2007 together with the Montenegrin Nikola Peković in the final against hosts Turkey they remained undefeated and after the opening defeat against hosts Slovenia they won the remaining tournament games in 2007. Miloš Teodosić, who was one of the few protagonists of the U18 European champions 2005 who was missing in the previous year, became tournament MVP.

Paunić was already playing at KK Vojvodina in Novi Sad at that time , but with he had narrowly missed entry into the 2007 play-offs of the Serbian championship after taking first place in the preliminary round of the Serbian league . Nevertheless, it was enough as the fifth Serbian team to qualify for a second time in the club's young history for the supranational ABA league, in which they only just missed the play-offs in the 2007/08 ABA league in ninth place. Vojvodina suffered the same fate again in the Serbian championship when they were the first team not qualified for the play-offs when they finished fifth in the main round. In the 2008/09 season Paunić played for the first time abroad with the Belgian cup winner BASE BC from Ostend on the English Channel , which, however, won no title in that season and only reached the EuroChallenge 2008/09 , in which the team already after the preliminary round against the later title winner Virtus Bologna retired. With a young Serbian men's national team, which, with the exception of Nenad Krstić and Bojan Popović, was based on the successful junior national teams from 1986 to 1989, Paunić won the silver medal at the 2009 European Championship after defending champion Russia in the quarter-finals and in the semifinals defeated the Slovenian selection , against which they had lost in the preliminary round, after extra time and moved into the final. Against the former European runner-up and 2008 Olympic silver medalist, Spain , the Serbs lost the final by a significant margin of over 20 points.

In the 2009/10 season Paunić played for Aris from Thessaloniki in the A1 Ethniki , which, however, only finished seventh as third place in the previous season and was eliminated in the first play-off round against runner-up Olympiacos Piraeus . In the Eurocup 2009/10 , however, the team was group winners in the preliminary round and was able to qualify in the intermediate round together with the eventual finalist Alba Berlin from Germany for the knockout games from the quarterfinals. In the quarterfinals, however, they lost both games against eventual title winners Power Electronics Valencia BC . In the 2010 World Cup finals , the Serbian selection won their preliminary round group despite a narrow defeat after extra time against the German selection and was able to beat European champions Spain by just three points in the quarterfinals. After losing the semifinals against hosts Turkey with just one point difference in the final seconds, the selection then also lost the “small final” for the bronze medal against Lithuania with a comparatively significant 86:99. The following two seasons Paunić played in Russia at the club from Nizhny Novgorod . With this club he did not reach any top positions in the new Russian professional league PBL and was eliminated early on in the international club competition EuroChallenge . Even with the Serbian national team it was only enough to finish eighth at the 2011 European Championship , after the team only narrowly won the second round match against runner-up Turkey and lost all other tournament games after four opening wins against Germany, among others. After BK Nizhny Novgorod won only one game in the second round of the EuroChallenge 2011/12 and failed at the later title winner Beşiktaş JK Milangaz and the unbeaten in the second round Baloncesto Fuenlabrada, Paunić moved to the Lega Basket Serie A for the traditional club Virtus at the end of April 2012 from Bologna . The team, which was named Canadian Solar in that season , was eliminated as fifth in the main round in the first play-off round of the Italian championship without a win of its own against Banco di Sardegna Sassari . In the successful, albeit narrow, European Championship qualification in summer 2012, Paunić played his last appearances for the time being for the Serbian men's selection.

In the 2012/13 season Paunić first played for Azovmash from Mariupol in the Basketball Superliga Ukraine and the supranational VTB United League 2012/13 , but moved to the Spanish ACB league for the first time to Lagun Aro GBC from San Sebastián in the Basque Country before the end of the year . However, Paunić could not prevent the former play-off participant at the end of the season as the penultimate occupying a relegation place. Although the GBC was able to avoid relegation due to the lack of licensing of the climbers, but Paunić moved to the following season within the league for the club from Fuenlabrada , who was able to secure relegation again at the end of the season as fourth from bottom . For the 2014/15 season Paunić first returned to the United League when he played for the Kazakh champions from Astana . Again in December he left this club and moved to the Montenegrin capital Podgorica for KK Budućnost, with whom he won only one game in the Eurocup 2014/15 in the second group stage of the best 32 teams in six games. In the first-time play-offs of the ABA-Liga 2014/15 , the main round runner-up and Montenegrin double winner lost the following three games against the Croatian club KK Cedevita and was eliminated in the semi-final series after two opening wins . Budućnost was able to defend the national double, but Paunić went back to the ACB league in Fuenlabrada for the following 2015/16 season. Together with his team- mates Jonathan Tabu and Marko Popović, Paunić occupied a play-off position that the club last reached in 2011 after more than half of the season.

Web links

Commons : Ivan Paunić  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

• ACB.COM: Ivan Paunic - player profile on the websites of the Liga ACB ( Spanish )
• Paunić, IVAN - Player profile on the website of the Eurocup ( English )
• Ivan Paunić - Overview of participation in international FIBA tournaments on archive.fiba.com (English)
• ABA - Player: Ivan Paunić - Profile on the statistics pages of the ABA League (English)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Serbia & Montenegro Celebrate Title. FIBA Europe , July 24, 2005, accessed February 21, 2016 . 
2. ↑ Teodosic lifts Serbia To Title. FIBA Europe , July 15, 2007, accessed on February 21, 2016 (English, match report final game). 
3. ↑ David Hein: Haven't We Met Before? FIBA Europa , September 20, 2009, accessed on February 21, 2016 (English, final game preview). 
4. ↑ Jeff Taylor: WE ARE THE CHAMPIONS! FIBA Europa , September 20, 2009, accessed on February 21, 2016 (English, match report final game). 
5. ↑ Legabasket: Ivan Paunic. Lega Basket Serie A , accessed February 21, 2016 (Italian, player profile).