Jure Balažič

Jure Balažič
Player information
birthday	September 12, 1980
place of birth	Novo mesto, SFR Yugoslavia
size	202 cm
position	Power Forward / Small Forward
Club information
society	Royal Halı Gaziantep
league	Türkiye Basketbol Ligi
Jersey number	15th
Clubs as active
Until 002005 KK Krka Novo mesto 2001–2002 → Krško 2005 KK Zagreb 2005–2006 APOEL Nicosia 2006 KK Krka 2006–2007 Atomerőmű SE Paks 2007–2012 KK Krka 2012–2013 Erdemirspor 2013–2014 Tofaş SK Bursa 2014–2015 Istanbul BB Since 2015 Royal Halı Gaziantep 00000 00000 0
National team
Since 02012	Slovenia

Jure Balažič (born September 12, 1980 in Novo mesto , SR Slovenia ) is a Slovenian basketball player . With a three-year break, Balažič played for KK Krka in his home country until 2012, with which he became Slovenian champion five times and won the international club competition EuroChallenge 2010/11 . At almost 32 years of age, Balažič is considered the oldest debutant in the 25-year history of the Slovenian men's national team . As a national player, he moved abroad again and has since played in the Türkiye Basketbol Ligi for various clubs. With the Slovenian national team, Balažič took part in two European Championship finals and the 2014 World Cup finals .

Career

Balažič was trained in the youth teams of the KK Krka in Novo mesto and came in the first men's team of the club, which won its first national championship in the 1999/2000 season, next to Matjaž Smodiš , who was almost a year older, only to individual missions. In the 2001/02 season Balažič therefore played at the second division in Krško , before returning to KK Krka for the following season. In the 2002/03 season, Krka not only won its second national championship, but also made it into the finals of the ULEB Cup 2002/03 , then called the ULEB Cup 2002/03 , in the premiere season of the ULEB Eurocup . Here they were defeated in two games Pamesa Valencia , with Balažič only got playing time in the second final game. After this international success, the team broke up to a large extent, won only two of 14 games in the ULEB Euroleague 2003/04 and the club was initially unable to continue these successes. Finally, Balažič also left the club and moved to neighboring Croatia at the end of the 2005 season to KK Zagreb, which, however , ranks behind record champions KK Cibona in the capital . The following season Balažič began in the Republic of Cyprus for APOEL from the capital Nicosia . With this team Balažič moved into the quarter-finals of the FIBA EuroCup Challenge 2005/06, in which one was defeated by the later finalist Chimik Juschne . Subsequently, Balažič returned to KK Krka in February 2006, before he played again abroad for the 2006/07 season with the then Hungarian champions Atomerőmű SE in Paks . The team remained without a win in six FIBA EuroCup games in 2006/07 and also missed their third championship in a row at the end of the season.

Finally, Balažič returned to Krka Novo mesto for a longer period of time for the 2007/08 season. From the 2009/10 season, Krka was able to outstrip the financially struggling record champions KK Union Olimpija from the capital again under the Serbian coach Aleksandar Džikić and won three championships in a row from 2010 to 2012. As champions in 2010, you also took part in international club competitions and won the title in the EuroChallenge 2010/11 as the successor to the BG Göttingen . At the Final Four tournament in Ostend , Balažič, as team captain, first led the team to success over the host and then, surprisingly, to the final victory against Russian representative Lokomotive Kuban Krasnodar , the club's first international title win. In the Eurocup 2011/12 it was enough to move into the second group stage of the 16 best teams, but after only one win in six games, the team was eliminated. Finally, in the summer of 2012, at the age of almost 32, Balažič was appointed to the men's national team for the first time by coaching legend Božidar Maljković , who had already qualified as host for the 2013 European Championship finals .

As a national player, Balažič moved abroad again and played from the 2012/13 season in Turkey initially for the first division club Erdemirspor from Zonguldak in the Türkiye Basketbol Ligi . At the end of the season, the team reached the third-best position in the club's history in tenth place, but after the season they were withdrawn from professional play. At the 2013 European Championship finals, Balažič played his first finals with the national team in front of a home crowd, which, however, lost the quarter-finals to eventual title winners France . After two wins in placement games, Slovenia finished fifth and qualified for the World Cup finals the following year. In Turkey, Balažič had switched to league competitor Tofaş SK from Bursa , with whom he missed qualification for the second group stage in the EuroChallenge 2013/14 against his long-time club Krka, among others. In the national championship, the club again reached eighth place in qualifying for the play-offs for the championship, in which they remained without a win against Banvit BK . At the 2014 World Cup finals in Spain , the national team lost only the last preliminary round match against Lithuania , which, however, led to the defending champions United States being knocked out in the quarter-finals after winning the round of 16 over the Dominican Republic's basketball team. With the Turkish first division promoted from Istanbul Balažič achieved relegation in the 2014/15 season in twelfth place before national coach Jure Zdovc took him again for the 2015 European Championship finals . Without NBA pro Goran Dragic it was enough to make it into the round of 16, in which the Slovenes were eliminated after their defeat against Latvia and lost all chances of a first-time Olympic qualification. Then Zdovc brought Balažič to his team Royal Halı in Gaziantep as club coach , before the former player world champion moved to AEK Athens shortly before Christmas . Balažič continued to play with Gaziantep in the FIBA Europe Cup 2015/16 , in which they met the German representative Skyliners Frankfurt in the second group phase .

Web links

Commons : Jure Balažič  - collection of images, videos and audio files

• Balažič, JURE - Player profile on the website of the Eurocup ( English )
• Balažič, Jure - Turkish Basketball League Player - Profile on the statistics pages of TBLStat.net (English / Turkish)
• Jure Balažič - Overview of participation in international FIBA tournaments on archive.fiba.com (English)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Jure Balazic / FIBA Europe Cup. FIBA Europe , accessed on January 8, 2016 (English, player profile). 
2. ^ BC KRKA Telekom - KK Kumanovo / Korac Cup (1999). FIBA Europe , accessed on January 8, 2016 (English, game statistics; first and for the following four years only international assignment of the 18-year-old Balažič). 
3. ↑ Finals: Pamesa Valencia becomes first ULEB Cup champ! ULEB Eurocup , 2003, accessed on January 8, 2016 (English, overview page). 
4. ↑ Luka Maselj: Balazic: KRKA In The Final Four To Win. FIBA Europa , April 12, 2011, accessed January 8, 2016 . 
5. ^ KRKA Bring The Trophy To Slovenia. FIBA Europa , May 1, 2011, accessed January 8, 2016 . 
6. ↑ Košarkarska zveza Slovenije: Zgodovina - 2012 Priprave na EuroBasket 2013. (No longer available online.) Kzs.si, archived from the original on January 9, 2016 ; accessed on January 8, 2016 (Slovenian, compilation of previous squads). Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.