The young basketball players of Igokee m:tel failed to secure a place in the finals of the FIBA Champions League for the second time in a row!
Izvor: Basketball Champions League
Igokea handed over the trophy of the European champion!
After winning Group B in Debrecen, Hungary, the young “Igos” met the winner of Group A, Ritas in the semi-finals on Friday, but they did not repeat last season’s success from Izmir, Turkey, where they defeated the Lithuanian team.
This time, Ritas was better thanks to a great game in the second half, and especially in the last quarter.
RITAS – IGOKEA 83:76 (16:31, 19:18, 25:18, 23:9)
Boris Jokanović’s team stormed into the game and won the first quarter in their favor with a 15-point difference, which they maintained without any major problems until the halftime break (49:35).
However, in the third quarter of the match in the “Olah Gabor Arena”, the Lithuanians slowly melted the advantage and in the finish managed to reduce the point difference to a single digit, so they entered the decisive 10 minutes with “plus seven” (67:60).
The team from Vilnius took advantage of the drop in the game of Aleksandrovčani and entered the last period with a 6:0 series, so coach Jokanović had to react with a minute’s rest.
With free throws in the middle of the fourth quarter, Ritas equalized for the first time (70:70), and then took the lead with a three-pointer by Dziugas Remeikis, and then the difference would only continue to grow against the psychologically shaken young “igos”.
The young people from Aleksandrov tried to fight back, reducing the score even to “minus one”, but the Lithuanians defended themselves, and when Ritas went up by six with a three-pointer by Gantas Krizanauskas in the last minute, it was clear that Igokea would miss the final.
The “Igos” did not have a solution for the best individual in Ritas Ignaro Urbonas, who scored 25 points, while the first name of the game for the team from Laktaš was Ognjen Radošić with 33 points. Andrej Aćimović, with 15, and Faruk Duvnjak, with two fewer hits, also recorded a double-digit performance.
The second semi-final pair consists of the Turkish teams, champions of groups C and D, Tofas and Galatasaray, who will play their match at 21:00.