Inside the Final Four teams - Rilski Sportist
Rilski Sportist
The Rilski Sportist basketball club was founded in the beautiful Rila Mountain town of Samokov in 1993. It slowly but surely started its rise through the ranks, represented by just youth teams initially. The growing success of the Rilski Sportist youth set-up laid the foundations for the creation of men’s and women’s teams. The men’s team was formed in 2001 and in 2003 it started playing in the highest division of Bulgarian basketball. Over the next 5 seasons it was gradually improving its roster by bringing in better and better players from other club in Bulgaria, as well as some foreigners. But the basis was always the in-depth array of talent coming from an already famous youth academy, which has won 11 Bulgarian titles in different juniors and girls age groups in an 8-year span (2000-2008).
All of that has been just a build up to the current 2008/09 season, which already is by far the most successful in the Rilski Sportist men’s team history, even though it is still in progress. This season the team has beaten every other team in the Bulgarian National League at least once. That includes even the dominant Lukoil Academic, who prior to the current season had gone unbeaten for an amazing 2 years. The new Arena Samokov, where Lukoil and almost everyone else has been defeated, was inaugurated a year ago and is another main factor in the club’s current and future success.
Rilski Sportist have a perfect 5-0 record in the Arena so far in this opening season of the Eurohold Balkan League. The team was a late wild card replacement for Macedonian team Strumica 2005, but has since completely justified the decision of the BIBL management by going all the way through to the Final Four. Rilski Sportist finished the Regular Season top of Group B with a 6-2 record and then made easy work of Serbians Radnicki 034 Group in the quarterfinal, defeating them 184-148 on aggregate in the two legs. The Bulgarian team had also proved they are capable of wining big games outside Arena Samokov too, when they defeated Fersped Rabotnicki in Skopje to clinch that 1st place in Group B.
Besides the great to watch uptempo passing game that Macedonian coach Aleksandar Todorov has implemented this season, the Bulgarian team also relies on one big ace out of the pack - American center Travis Peterson, the MVP of the BIBL Regular Season. For the opponents of Rilski Sportist it is always hard to contain his offence (21 points per game) as well as keep off his shot-blocking, when they try to score in the paint. He is also the leading rebounder of the team with 9.1 boards per game.
The next 4 best scorers for Rilski Sportist in the Eurohold Balkan League are as follows: Young Serbian power forward Dragoslav Papic (16.5 ppg), Serbian point guard Branko Mirkovic (14.1 ppg), 20-year old Bulgarian prodigy Ivan Lilov (14.0 ppg) and shooting guard Bogdan Boev (9.4 ppg).
Papic is a three-point shooting threat, with 2.1 triples made per BIBL contest. Mirkovic is also the leader in assists not only for Rilski Sportist but the entire Balkan League as well with 4.8 per game.
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| No Games Scheduled |
| Delasport Balkan League 2023/2024 Regular Season | |||
| 1 | .jpg){kind=logo} KB Sigal Prishtina |
8 - 2 | 18 |
| 2 |  PAYABL EKA AEL |
6 - 4 | 16 |
| 3 |  KB Peja |
6 - 4 | 16 |
| 4 |  KK Lovcen 1947 |
4 - 6 | 14 |
| 5 |  KK Plevlja |
0 - 8 | 8 |
