Cibona Win in Zadar to Reclaim the Croatian Crown and Stretch Their Record

Cibona are champions of Croatia once more, silencing a packed Dvorana Kresimir Cosic with an 82-75 win over hosts Zadar in the decisive fifth game of the SuperSport Premijer liga finals and completing a stirring comeback in the series to do it.
The triumph extends Cibona's standing as the most decorated club in Croatian basketball, delivering a 21st national championship to add to the record haul they have built since the league's founding in 1991. It also dethroned the defending champions: Zadar, the regular-season top seed and winners of the last title, were chasing back-to-back crowns and a seventh of their own, but instead remain on six. Having dropped Games 2 and 3 to fall behind in the best-of-five series, Cibona roared back to win Game 4 and force a decider, then closed it out in hostile territory.
For a half, Zadar hung tough. The teams were tied 15-15 after the first quarter and level again at the break before Cibona found another gear, taking the third quarter 25-19 and blowing the game open with a 27-20 fourth. The Zagreb side's perimeter shooting was the decisive weapon: they buried 12 of 25 from beyond the arc and shot 50 percent overall, comfortably outgunning a Zadar team that went just 7 of 32 from three and was beaten 40-31 on the glass.
Justin Roberson (187-G-1993, college: ULM) led the champions with 17 points and a game-high efficiency rating, Zan Mark Sisko (190-PG-1997) ran the show with 13 points and five assists, and Renato Serdarusic (196-F-2001) and Jan Palokaj (198-F/G-2000, agency: BIG) added 11 apiece as Cibona's bench made the difference down the stretch. Zadar had no shortage of fight, led by a brilliant 27-point night from Vladimir Mihailovic (193-PG-1990) and a 13-point, seven-rebound double-double from Lovro Mazalin (204-SF-1997), but their cold shooting from distance proved fatal on their own floor.
The result added another chapter to one of the oldest and most storied rivalries in Croatian and former Yugoslav basketball. Cibona, the Zagreb club that won back-to-back European Champions Cup titles in 1985 and 1986 in the Drazen Petrovic era, and Zadar, one of the founding powers of the Yugoslav game, have crossed paths in the Croatian finals before most memorably in a series in which Cibona became the first team in league history to overturn a 0-2 deficit, rallying to beat Zadar in the decider. That it all unfolded this time in the arena named for Zadar and Yugoslav great Kresimir Cosic only sharpened the significance of Cibona's road triumph.