10 Jul 2018
MIES (FIBA 3x3 World Tour) - Last year's Debrecen and Mexico City Masters winners Liman Tesla Voda (SRB) are already guaranteed to play in 6 FIBA 3x3 World Tour Masters in 2018.
It has been a pretty productive 2 months for the number 2 team in the world. The foursome of 3x3 star Stefan Stojacic and teammates Stefan Kojic, Aleksandar Ratkov and Mihailo Vasic started the season with 2 guaranteed spots to the World Tour 2018 (Chengdu and Prague), based on their ranking (3rd back on November 1, 2017). Since then, they won 4 additional slots in Challengers all around the world.
The young Serbian team had a near-perfect Chinese trip in May. They won in Wuxi and Chengdu and finished second in Huai An, good enough for 3 more tickets to Utsunomiya, Saskatoon and Kuala Lumpur respectively.
Liman Tesla Voda secured their latest World Tour ticket (to Debrecen) at the Limassol Challenger, where they lost on a buzzer beater in the final.
Interestingly, though the team has secured 4 passes to the World Tour already, they are only second in season earnings in 2018, behind Piran (SLO), who have already cashed in 33,000 USD in prize money (versus 32k for the Serbs).
Behind Liman Tesla Voda, the previously mentioned Piran (SLO) and the 2-time World Tour winners Novi Sad (SRB) have already stamped 5 tickets to the World Tour.
The FIBA 3x3 World Tour 2018 starts on July 21-22 in Saskatoon, Canada and grew from 7 to 9 Masters this season. With 9 Challengers and more Qualifiers still to be played this season, Liman Tesla Voda are still in the race to match Novi Sad's last year's achievement of qualifying for every single World Tour Masters.
World Tour Masters Tickets Rankings
1. Liman Tesla Voda (SRB) 6
2. Novi Sad (SRB) 5
- Piran (SLO) 5
4. Amsterdam Inoxdeals (NED) 4
- Humpolec Bernard (CZE) 4
6. Riga (LAT) 3
- Saskatoon (CAN) 3
- Ulaanbaatar (MGL) 3
- Princeton (USA) 3
9. Belgrade (SRB) 2
- Kranj (SLO) 2
- Ljubljana (SLO) 2
- Melbourne i-Athletic (AUS) 2
- Moscow Inanomo 2
- Ponce (PUR) 2
FIBA