Serbia: Meridian Indija Indians score upset playoff win over Belgrade Blue Dragons

The Meridian Indija Indians stunned the Serbian American Football league last weekend after upsetting the favored Belgrade Blue Dragons 35-28 in the wild card playoffs and advancing to the semifinals of the SPORT CLUB First Serbian League.

The fourth place Blue Dragons had beaten Indija earlier in the season 23-7.

On this day though, Belgrade had no answer for Indians running back Aleksandar Borkovic.

Borkovic scored all five touchdowns for Indija, catching three from quarterback Blair Black and running two more in himself. When the game seemed to be slipping away in the fourth quarter, he was unstoppable scoring the final two touchdowns of the game.

Blue Dragons quarterback Mladen Zlatić threw three touchdown passes, two to Milan Nikolic and one to Zeljko Novak. Running back Zeljko Kostic scored the fourth.

The two teams traded touchdowns in the first half with the Indians matching Belgrade touchdown for touchdown.

The game was tied 21-21 at halftime and remained that way until early in the fourth when Belgrade edged ahead 28-21 on Novak’s one yard touchdown. But the Blue Dragons lead vanished as Borkovic struck twice more first hauling in a 35 yard touchdown pass from Black to tie the score at 28-28 and then scampering for 20 yards for the winning touchdown with not much time left.

This is the first time in their history that the Indians have advanced to the Serbian semifinals.

The Indians will face the defending champion Kragujevac Wild Boars this weekend in one semifinal while SBB Vukovi Belgrade takes on the GAT Novi Sad Dukes in the other. The Dukes defeated the Sirmium Legionaries 40-0 in the other wild card game.