Novi Sad, Serbia, March 29, 2015.  Vojvodina NS Seme NOVI SAD reached the 2015 CEV Volleyball Challenge Cup men’s final to achieve a historic success – the first European Cup final in the history of the club.  The Serbian team beat Stroitel MINSK by 3:2 (23-25, 24-26, 25-22, 25-15, 15-10) in the second leg of their semifinal clash and did not allow its Belarusian opponent reach the golden set despite taking a 2:0 lead in the  match.

The first two sets were very competitive and tied through the second technical time-out.  Vojvodina took an advantage of 20-16 in the first set and 17-15 in the second, but that was not enough against the strong eam from Minsk. Stroitel’s players were calm and precise in the conclusive moments and won by 25-23 and 26-24, respectively, to pose a serious 2:0 scare to the home side, which had won the first leg convincingly by 3:1.

Stroitel continued powerfully, 8-4, 12-7 in the third set until the coach of Vojvodina Strahinja Kozic made some changes.  Captain Veljko Petkovic came on and led the team from Novi Sad to the win of the third set – 25-22.  The home side played much better with good attacking, blocking and defence.  Vojvodina dominated, won the fourth set by a landslide 25-15, thus securing the ticket to the final, before finishing the job with 15-10 in the tie-breaker.

Drazen Luburic was the best scorer of the match with 17 points for Vojvodina.  His teammate Milan Katic and Stroitel’s Sebastian Krause and Radzivon Miskevich followed with 14 points each.

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