Partizan NIS Belgrade will be playing in the 7DAYS EuroCup for a fourth consecutive season. Partizan’s 2019-20 campaign showcased its great defense, starting in Round 1 with a 63-66 victory at Umana Reyer Venice. After a rare offensive shootout in Round 2 - a 93-80 home win over Tofas Bursa - Partizan ratcheted up its defense again with a 61-66 Round 3 triumph at Rytas Vilnius. The Serbian side allowed just 60 points in a road win at Limoges CSP to improve to 5-0. Reyer and Tofas tallied 83 and 82 points, respectively, in beating Partizan in consecutive games before Partizan bounced back for an 86-81 win against Rytas. Partizan lost at Lokomotiv Kuban Krasnodar before finishing the regular season with a strong 77-58 victory against Limoges for a 7-3 record. Partizan opened the Top 16 in style with a record-setting 99-81 victory at home over Segafredo Virtus Bologna, setting club marks for most points in a half with 62 in the first half and most triples in a game with 14. Partizan followed that with a 58-63 road win over Dolomiti Energia Trento before dropping its only game in the Top 16: 65-63 at Darussafaka Tekfen Istanbul. Partizan rebounded with a 69-57 win over Darussafaka at home in Round 4 and beat Virtus again - 82-84 in Italy - before finishing the Top 16 with a 16-point blowout of Trento at home for a 5-1 record and home court advantage in the quarterfinals against UNICS Kazan, which was cancelled after the Covid-19 pandemic broke out. Partizan allowed just 71.2 points per game in the EuroCup, the second-best defense in the competition while also ranking top-five in both opponents’ 2-point and 3-point shooting percentages. Domestically, Partizan knocked off city rivals Crvena Zvezda mts Belgrade 85-84 in overtime to win the Serbian Radivoj Korac Cup. Partizan started relatively slowly in the Adriatic League with a 2-2 record before running off 11 wins in the next 12 games and held a 17-4 record for first place when Covid-19 ended the season. Partizan returns to the EuroCup looking to build on its impressive last season.

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EuroCup

Founded in 1945, Partizan started to make noise in European competitions in the late 1970s, when Dragan Kicanovic and Drazen Dalipagic led the club to Korac Cup titles in 1978 and 1979. Vlade Divac and Zarko Paspalj helped the club reach the 1988 EuroLeague Final Four and lift the 1989 Korac Cup. In 1992, Partizan won the club's first – and to date only – EuroLeague crown by downing DKV Joventut 70-71 on a miraculous buzzer-beater by Sasha Djordjevic, which ranks among the most amazing shots in basketball history. At home, Partizan remained a dominant force by winning trophies at a steady clip and it returned to the EuroLeague Final Four in 1998, but lost in the semifinals against eventual champion Kinder Bologna. From the turn of the century, Partizan managed to remain fully competitive while developing players, including some of the best big men in European basketball, such as Nikola Pekovic, Aleks Maric, Kosta Perovic, Jan Vesely, Novica Velickovic and Milan Macvan. Before them, Dejan Tomasevic, Nenad Krstic and Predrag Drobnjak all played for Partizan, too. With a fan base that treats the club and basketball like a religion, success turned the club from contender to EuroLeague giant. To the fans' delight, Partizan registered three consecutive EuroLeague Playoff appearances between 2008 and 2010, with the latter being the year in which the club once again reached the EuroLeague Final Four. Maric, Bo McCalebb and Vesely helped Partizan top Maccabi Tel Aviv in the playoffs, and once at the big event, Partizan became the first team to lose both its Final Four games in overtime. Domestically, from the turn of the century, Partizan dominated with a run of 13 consecutive Serbian League crowns, five consecutive Serbian Cups from 2008 through 2012, and ruling the Adriatic League with five trophies from 2007 through 2011 and another one in 2013. After it topped archrival Crvena Zvezda 3-1 in the 2014 Serbian League final to win the title, Partizan hit a dry spell. It made its EuroCup debut in 2014-15, but failed to leave a mark and suffered its first title-free season in 14 years. As it underwent a rebuild, Partizan did not win any silverware the following two seasons either, before ending that rare drought by lifting the Serbian Cup in each of the last three years. Partizan also reached the EuroCup Top 16 for the first time in 2018-19 and moved to the quarterfinals last season, which shows that the club is on the right track again. Partizan always counts on its army of basketball die-hards and hopes to take more steps to get back to the path of glory.

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