National Basketball Championship: Tamil Nadu cagers revel under Serbian Milan

The host defeated Services 94-86 in a cracking final, which was filled with end-to-end stuff. TN men dominated the proceedings from the very beginning, winning all their league matches, bagging the top spot in the group standings.

The Tamil Nadu Basketball Association, which hosted the tournament, was ambitious about bringing the trophy back home after the state went through a drought in the last three years. Tamil Nadu last made it to the final four years ago, defeating 2018 semi-finalist Punjab in the title clash. In the subsequent championships, TN qualified for the final but fell in the last hurdle to defending champion Uttarakhand. 

Experienced players like Rikin Pethani, Prasanna Venkatesh, Akilan and Aravind peaked towards the business end of the championship, after being dropped a few times due to the ‘squad rotation’ policy of Opacic.

Opacic, who at the start of the campaign condemned the style of training that was adopted in the state, did whatever tweaking he could to bring in a positive change in just about three months. “The way the game is played here is completely different to what we have in Europe. Tamil Nadu has done decently over the years. But it has failed to defeat heavyweights like Punjab and Services. I have brought a few changes into the system and I am hopeful of clinching the championship,” Milan had said ahead of the event.

“I obviously can’t change everything in a span of just three months. I did make a few tweaks here and there in our gameplay. All I wanted the players to do was to be more disciplined and only because of that, we are here,” Opacic expressed his satisfaction on winning the championship. The Tamil Nadu preliminary squad went through 45 rigorous days of training, before the selection panel decided to pick a 12-man squad.