Jaka Klobučar

Jaka Klobučar
Player information
birthday	August 19, 1987
place of birth	Novo mesto, SFR Yugoslavia
size	198 cm
position	Point Guard / Shooting Guard
Club information
society	Istanbul BB
league	Türkiye Basketbol Ligi
Jersey number	18th
Clubs as active
2004–2005 KK Krka Novo mesto 2005–2008 KD Geoplin Slovan Ljubljana 2008–2010 KK Union Olimpija Ljubljana 2010–2011 KK Partizan Belgrade → 2011 KK Union Olimpija 2011 KK Krka 2011–2012 Assi Domotecnica Ostuni 2012–2014 KK Krka 2014–2015 ratiopharm Ulm Since 2015 Istanbul BB 000 00000 0
National team
Since 02007	Slovenia

Jaka Klobučar (born August 19, 1987 in Novo mesto , SR Slovenia ) is a Slovenian basketball player . The Slovenian international played professionally for the two clubs Slovan and Olimpija from the capital Ljubljana as well as his home club Krka from his hometown, with which he was awarded two Slovenian champions after winning the title with Olimpija and in 2014 as the final series MVP of the Slovenian championship. Abroad, Klobučar has so far worked in Serbia , Italy and in the 2014/15 basketball Bundesliga for the German first division club ratiopharm Ulm. Since the 2015/16 season, the two-time World Cup finals player has been playing for the Turkish first division club Istanbul BB in the Türkiye Basketbol Ligi .

Career

Klobučar made his first steps in the men's area at his home club Krka, which after the second championship and reaching the finals in the debut season 2002/03 of the ULEB Eurocup had to accept a small personal bloodletting and was meanwhile only mediocre in the Slovenian league. At the age of 18, the young selection player moved to the capital in 2005 for runner-up KD Geoplin Slovan. After the first main round place in 2006 Slovan lost the final series for the championship again against local rivals and defending champions Union Olimpija. In the following two years, however, Slovan slipped in the table and after fifth place in 2008 also missed the play-offs for the championship of the best four teams. In the ABA league , Slovan only narrowly missed the play-offs in ninth place in 2006, in the following two years they only reached the penultimate and finally in 2008 the last place.

At the U20 European Championship finals in 2006, the Slovenian junior selection, led by the trio of Emir Preldžić , Gašper Vidmar and Klobučar, who were all born in 1987 , surprisingly achieved the bronze medal. In the sixth edition of this competition a year later, the Slovenian selection, which was the record winner after two previous titles, was again led by these three players and was one of the top favorites when it was held in their own country. After the narrow opening victory against defending champion Serbia, the team only reached third place in the three-way comparison of the intermediate round and missed the semifinals after the only tournament defeat against Russia. After the fifth Klobučar and Vidmar were then national coach Ales Pipan straight to the championship finals of the men taken while in Bosnia -born Preldžić stayed at home and eventually switched nationality. The Slovenian men's selection had an excellent start to the tournament with five wins at the start, but after the 77:47 victory over Germany , they lost the following three games, including one point difference in the quarter-finals against Greece , and thus missed direct Olympic qualification in the final seventh place. Klobučar had five short tournament appearances and was used the following summer of 2008 at the pre-Olympic qualification tournament in Athens only briefly in the victory over Canada . After losing to Puerto Rico in the following game, however, the Slovenes had finally missed participation in the Olympic basketball tournament in Beijing .

After the summer of 2008, Klobučar moved within the capital to the record champions Union Olimpija. In the course of the season, the former world and European champion Jurij Zdovc , who had already become the new national coach, succeeded Aleksandar Džikić in the team that was able to defend the title again at the end of the season and, in connection with the cup competition, the national double . In the following season, however, they just lost the 2010 championship final series against KK Krka, trained by Džikić. In the highest-ranking European club competition ULEB Euroleague , Union Olimpija was eliminated early in the preliminary round after two wins in ten games in 2009 and after just one victory in 2010, but Olimpija returned in 2010 to the Final Four tournament of the ABA League, where one reached the semifinals Host KK Cibona Zagreb lost. At the European Championship finals 2011 , in which the Slovenian national team achieved an excellent fourth place, and under the new national coach Memi Bečirović at the 2010 World Cup , in which Slovenia failed in the quarter -finals against hosts Turkey , Klobučar was again only a substitute player and came on no significant play. He then moved to the ABA League title winner KK Partizan in Belgrade , Serbia , but he could not prevail there and came back to Union Olimpija on loan after winning the title in the Serbian national cup competition in 2011. The team won the ABA League Final Four tournament in front of their home crowd in Ljubljana in the semifinals against their national rivals and champions KK Krka, but in the final they were narrowly defeated by defending champion Partizan by three points, whereupon coach Zdovc resigned immediately. Klobučar was no longer eligible to play in the ABA league for Olimpija, so technically he was also ABA league winner in advance because of his involvement with Partizan, although his current team had lost the final. The final series of the Slovenian championship was lost again in five games against defending champion KK Krka. The new national coach Božidar Maljković had no use for Klobučar in the national team.

At the beginning of the 2011/12 season, Klobučar was briefly in the squad of the master Krka before he moved to the second Italian league Legadue for promoted Assi Domotecnica from Ostuni , who was in ninth place at the end of the season, the last place for the play-offs for promotion reached. In the play-offs, they lost in the first round in three games to local rivals and later play-off winners and thus first division promoted Enel Brindisi . In the following two seasons Klobučar played again at his home club in Krka, with whom he won their fourth and fifth national championship in a row, each in the final series against record champions Union Olimpija. Under coach returning Džikić, they won the national double in 2014 and Klobučar was named Most Valuable Player (MVP) in the championship final series in 2014 . In the ABA league, it was not enough for the team with a seventh place in 2013 and a ninth place in 2014 to make it into the Final Four. Klobučar's personal upward trend was crowned by the fact that Zdovc brought him back to the national squad for the 2014 World Cup as national coach and built him into the rotation of players with an average of more than ten minutes' average playing time per game. At the finals, the selection in the group stage only lost the final game against Lithuania . However, this meant that they met the defending champions United States in the quarter-finals and lost a lot with 76: 119. Klobučar moved abroad again and played in the basketball Bundesliga 2014/15 for the German first division club ratiopharm from Ulm . The Ulm team, who had done well in previous events of the Eurocup and always made it to the knockout rounds , disappointed in the less prestigious EuroChallenge 2014/15 when they were eliminated after the preliminary round, which means they did worse than Krka in the previous season, who had at least reached the intermediate round of the EuroChallenge 2013/14 . After finishing fifth in the Bundesliga main round, it was enough for the Ulm team to make it into the semi-final series in the play-offs, in which they lost to Brose Baskets, first and later title winner, without a win of their own. After Goran Dragić's cancellation , Klobučar's role in the national team at the 2015 European Championship finals grew , but without the NBA professional, they lost the round of 16 against Latvia after the group stage and again missed qualifying for the Olympic basketball tournament for the first time.

For the 2015/16 season, Klobučar was signed by the Istanbul Province Club , who had been promoted to the highest Turkish division Türkiye Basketbol Ligi the previous year . In addition to Klobučar, Justin Cobbs and Sean Armand were signed by the Skyliners Frankfurt , the German club for which his new teammate Dragan Labović had also been active. Together with the former Bamberg player Damir Markota , they want to try to improve their twelfth place from last year.

Web links

• KLOBUCAR, JAKA - player profile on the websites of the Euroleague ( English )
• Jaka Klobučar - Overview of participation in international FIBA tournaments on archive.fiba.com (English)
• ABA - Player: Jaka Klobučar - Profile on the website of the ABA League (English)

Individual evidence

1. ^ Slovenia grave bronze medal. FIBA Europa , July 23, 2006, accessed November 24, 2015 (English, match report). 
2. ↑ Russia Break Slovenia Hearts. FIBA Europa , July 12, 2007, accessed November 24, 2015 (English, match report). 
3. ↑ Legaduebasket: Jaka Klobucar. Legadue , archived from the original on August 19, 2012 ; accessed on November 24, 2015 (Italian, player profile). 
4. ↑ Beko BBL - 31652 Jaka KLOBUCAR. Basketball Bundesliga , accessed on November 25, 2015 (player profile with statistics).