Cherno More devoured by rampant Lions in Varna

McIntosh led the losing side in points and assists

28-01-2009 21:05

Serbs Swisslion Takovo Vrsac proved their mettle by going to the Bulgarian port city of Varna and defeating Euroins Cherno More 71-98 in a Eurohold Balkan League (BIBL) Group A encounter. They made it look easy tonight, as they were quickly passing the ball around and scoring both from inside and out, while making it much harder for the home team to score and especially for their big men. Experienced point guard Sasa Ocokoljic delivered his best BIBL performance for the Lions with 24 points, 6 assists and 4 rebounds.

The victory lifts the team from Vrsac to the top of the Group A table (5-1), making them even stronger favorites for that top spot in the regular season, hence a potentially easier opponent in the quarters. Euroins Cherno More (2-4) still have to qualify for those quarterfinals and it won't be easy for the Bulgarians - they need to beat CSU Cuadripol in Brasov on February 11-th, or in case of a loss (a 7 point one at the most) they have to beat Feni Industries at home a week later; a defeat of more than 8 points at the hands of the Romanians would mean the end of Cherno More's season in the BIBL.

The home team was led from the bench by Daniel Dimitrov, whose is not the head coach any more, but Euroins Cherno More are still waiting for their new coach Predrag Badnjarevic to arrive from his native Serbia. Badnjarevic's fellow countrymen started very strong against his new team and quickly built an advantage - 0-6, then 2-13 and 6-17. Then the hosts, who seemed in something of a shock, managed to come out of that state for a couple of minutes. Led on the court by an ever determined Simeon Tsenov, they cut it to 11-17, befored going back into the slump again to trail 14-25 after the opening 10 minutes.

The Varna team started to score a bit more in the second quarter, as point guard Corey McIntosh began playing better too and helping Tsenov in his scoring efforts. McIntosh's counterpart Ocokoljic was playing even better though and doing it from the start. The 32-old guard already had 19 points at half-time, while also orchestrating his team's offence brilliantly. The Lions' front court was thriving as well, as Cherno More's Atila Santos and Michael Earl were having a very bad day. The visitors led 34-49 at the break.

It all went the same way in the third period and it became more and more obvious that the home team had no way of turning the game around. The margin lingered at around 15 points until the mid point of the quarter, when it started to grow again and reached 22 points by its end - 48-70. McIntosh's had continued to score a lot and he scored even more in the 4-th frame (12 points just during that one), but it wasn't helping his team much and they lost the game by an even bigger margin - 71-98.

Besides Ocokoljic, the winning team got the most points from Radovan Markovic - 15. As we already stated, the front court totally outplayed their Cherno More counterparts - center Dusan Jelic (also known by his Greek name Koutsopoulos) had 13 pts and 9 rbs off the bench, while starting center Dusan Knezevic was very close to that tally 12 and 9 respectively. In comparison, all of the home team's big men only had 1 successful FG attempt all game.

With his good performance in offense from mid first half through to the end Corey McIntosh notched up game high totals of points (29) and assists (7), but to little avail. Simeon Tsenov battled his way to 19 points and 9 boards, while Bryce Sheldon had occasional flashes of shooting brilliance and finished with 14 pts in his BIBL debut.

FULL STATS OF THE EUROINS CHERNO MORE - SWISSLION TAKOVO GAME

STANDINGS IN BOTH EUROHOLD BIBL GROUPS

INDIVIDUAL STATS IN THE EUROHOLD BIBL

TEAM STATS IN THE EUROHOLD BIBL

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