Miha Zupan

Miha Zupan
Player information
birthday	September 13, 1982
place of birth	Kranj, SFR Yugoslavia
size	205 cm
position	Power forward
Club information
society	CSM Oradea
league	Divizia A
Clubs as active
2000–2006 KD Geoplin Slovan 2006–2009 KK Union Olimpija 2009–2010 AS Trikala 2000 2010–2012 Spartak St. Petersburg 2012–2013 Türk Telekomspor 2013–2015 Uşak Sportif Since 2016 CSM Oradea 0
National team
Since 02004	Slovenia

Miha Zupan (born September 13, 1982 in Kranj , SR Slovenia ) is a Slovenian basketball player . The national team and World and European Championships -Endrunden participant plays one of the few deaf basketball player similar to the short period in the NBA active Lance Allred at the highest level with athletes with normal hearing. In his home country he won two doubles with record champions Olimpija Ljubljana and in Russia with Spartak St. Petersburg 2011 the national cup. After three years in Turkey , Zupan has been playing in Romania for CSM Oradea since the beginning of 2016 .

Career

As a schoolboy Zupan learned to speak with the help of a hearing aid and finally began at the age of 14, after having previously tried his hand at soccer and volleyball , intensively with basketball, where he emulated Marko Milič , who became the first Slovenian player to take the plunge in 1997 at the age of 20 had made it into the highest-paying professional league NBA in the United States . Soon Zupan himself made the leap into the selection team for the deaf, with which he twice reached the finals of the European Deaf Championships as a student. After playing for a third division hearing-impaired team at the age of 17, he was allowed to take part in the U18 European Championship finals with the hearing-impaired youth team in the summer of 2000. Then a person in charge of KD Slovan from the capital Ljubljana gave him the chance to train and play with the professionals of the first division team at the age of 18 in 2000. Here he was promoted by coach Ivan Sunara , who also had a deaf classmate in his youth. After the team had already lost the cup final against local rivals and record champions Union Olimpija in 2003, they lost against this opponent both the championship final series in 2005 and those as the main round first in 2006. Then Zupan, who, among other things, in 2004 in the European Championship qualification for the men's national hearing team had already played, even becoming local rivals and record champions.

In the highest-ranking European club competition ULEB Euroleague 2006/07 Union Olimpija was despite the return of Milič, with whom Zupan now played himself, and five preliminary round victories only the last of his preliminary group. Also in the national cup and championship competitions they lost both titles to KK Helios Domžale . In the following two years, however, they were able to regain both titles against Helios and Zupan won the double twice . Also in the Adriatic Basketball League (ABA) 2007/08 it was enough for the first time after three years to move into the Final Four tournament, in which one was in the semifinals as hosts to defending champion KK Partizan Belgrade with just four points. In the summer of 2008, the Slovenian national team missed their first qualification for the Olympic basketball tournament again in the quarter-finals against Puerto Rico at the pre-Olympic qualification tournament in Athens with Zupan . With his club side failed Zupan in the following season also once again in the second round of the catchment ULEB Euro League 2008/09 even very clear with only two wins in twelve games as a group last, and was ninth in the ABA League 2008/09 also clearly removed from the final tournament of the supranational Adriatic League. Then Zupan moved abroad for the first time and played in the Greek A1 Ethniki for the previous year's climber from Trikala , who was dissolved at the end of the season after the sporting descent as the penultimate professional team. However, Zupan was able to convince individually with almost 14 points and five rebounds per game with good success rates.

With the Slovenian national team, Zupan won four preliminary round games at the 2010 World Cup in Turkey and only lost to the superior Olympic champion and eventual title winner United States . After the round of 16 success over Australia , the Slovenes then lost significantly to the hosts and eventual finalists Turkey and then also the remaining two placement games, so that Slovenia finished eighth. Zupan moved to Russia , where he won the 2011 national cup competition with BK Spartak from Saint Petersburg , which was played without the three best Russian teams that played in the newly founded VTB United League , modeled on the ABA League . For the following season, Spartak also moved into the expanded supranational league and reached the play-offs as runners-up in the group , in which they were inferior to national rivals Lokomotiv Kuban Krasnodar in the quarterfinals . In the Eurocup 2011/12 Spartak had left the German representative FC Bayern Munich behind in the preliminary round . With just one defeat in the entire competition, the team reached the Final Four tournament, in which they were defeated by the hosts BK Chimki by just four points in the semifinals and finally only finished fourth after the defeat against Lietuvos rytas Vilnius .

For the following season 2012/13 Zupan moved to the Türkiye Basketbol Ligi to Türk Telekomspor in the Turkish capital Ankara . After only eight wins in 30 games, however, the team missed again and this time clearly in 13th place the entry into the play-offs for the championship. Then Zupan moved to the promoted team from Uşak , who in seventh place in 2014 immediately ensured entry into the play-offs, in which they were eliminated in the first round against the eventual title winner Fenerbahçe Ülker . For the 2014 World Cup finals in Spain, Zupan returned to a final squad and Slovenia again only lost one preliminary round match. However, the defeat in the final group game with three points difference against Lithuania , in which Zupan achieved his tournament best with 13 points, meant that Slovenia met the defending champions United States in the quarter-finals after winning the last 16 over the national basketball team of the Dominican Republic and was eliminated. With Uşak Sportif, Zupan could no longer match the successes of the previous season and the team only finished 13th in the 2015 final table. At the 2015 European Championship finals , Slovenia lost with Zupan, but without NBA professional Goran Dragić, after the group games in the knockout system against Latvia in the round of 16 and once again missed the chance to qualify for the Olympic Games. Zupan signed his next professional contract with the Romanian first division club CSM from Oradea at the turn of the year .

Web links

Commons : Miha Zupan  - collection of images, videos and audio files

• Tiha zmaga - Web article with TV documentary and portrait of Miha Zupan from Radiotelevizija Slovenija ( Slovenian )
• ZUPAN, MIHA - Player profile on the website of the Euro League ( English )
• Zupan, Miha - Turkish Basketball League Player - Profile on the statistics pages of TBLStat.net (English / Turkish)
• Miha Zupan - Overview of participation in international FIBA tournaments on archive.fiba.com (English)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ FAN MAIL: Miha Zupan, Union Olimpija. Euroleague , December 2, 2008, accessed January 5, 2016 . 
2. ↑ ^{a b c} Euroleague.net profile: Miha Zupan. Euroleague , October 24, 2006, accessed January 5, 2016 . 
3. ↑ ^{a b c} Tilen Jamnik: Tiha zmaga - Kako Miha Zupan povezuje dva svetova. RTV SLO , September 21, 2015, accessed on January 5, 2016 (Slovenian).