Terzic: It Matters That Everyone Is Healthy

It was 20:18 for Bulgaria in the third set in Brno, and for a moment the stands went quiet. Serbia was losing its rhythm for the first time that night, and from the bench watched Tijana Boskovic, with Maja Ognjenovic next to her, two players the head coach normally does not pull off the court in the closing stages of a match. Then came a 6:0 run, the set closed out 25:20, and Serbia’s volleyball team had its third straight win at the European Championship.

The Group B match was played on August 24 in Brno, and Serbia won convincingly, 3:0 in sets, 25:18, 25:14 and 25:20. The first two sets went by without drama, with Serbia leading from the start and holding that lead to the finish. The tension arrived only in the third set, when Bulgaria climbed back from 10:5 down to 20:18, before Serbia shut the door with a 6:0 run to close out both the set and the match.

Aleksandra Uzelac was the most productive player on the court with 18 points, and she was also the one who led the comeback in the third set. Vanja Ivanovic added eight points, while Hena Kurtagic, with seven points and a strong showing at the net, was one of the reasons Bulgaria never got close to taking a set. On the other side, Iva Dudova stood out with 12 points, and Cvetelina Ilijeva added seven.

This was Serbia’s ninth straight win over Bulgaria across all competitions, so there was hardly room for a surprise in Brno. After three rounds, the national team is the only unbeaten side in Group B, having already swept past Austria and the Czech Republic without dropping a set. Group B also includes Greece and Ukraine, and all four teams are playing the group stage in the same arena in Brno.

What did Terzic criticize after the win?

Head coach Zoran Terzic made no secret after the match that he did not like what he saw in the closing stretch, even though the win itself was never in doubt from the first set.

It was clear from the start that we weren’t going in at full strength, which is normal for matches like this. We played the first two sets correctly, well enough. Then in the last set, once Maja came off, and especially once Tijana came off, we ran into a lot of problems and made a lot of silly mistakes. Let’s put that down to inexperience, I can’t really say youth, since they’re not that young. It matters that everyone is healthy, it matters that we’ve now got three matches behind us and that we won. We’ll see about the rest as we go.

Terzic said after the match, making clear the team made mistakes in that stretch that would not be tolerated in the later stages of the championship.

Terzic named 15 players for the championship, and that depth is exactly what lets him rotate the lineup in wins like this one without worrying about a drop in quality. The same depth, it seems, is also why the team starts making mistakes against an opponent it otherwise beats match after match once its most experienced players step off the court.

Serbia’s volleyball team plays its next European Championship match on Wednesday at 7pm, against Greece, and that will be a chance for Terzic to check on exactly what worried him after the Bulgaria game. The tournament runs from August 21 to September 6, so the group stage is only halfway done, and a spot in the knockout rounds still has to be earned round by round.

Nine straight wins over the same opponent sounds routine, and on the scoreboard it was. But the moment Uzelac and company lost their two most experienced players and the match wobbled shows how much Serbia still leans on Boskovic and Ognjenovic. Wednesday against Greece will be a tougher test than this one in Brno.