Rilski Sportist to 7th place

Santos Martinez with 25 points

09-04-2008 19:22

The team of Rilski Sportist played good today and managed to secure an important win. In Arena Samokov the hosts defeated Cherno More Eurohold 89-82. The team from Samokov moved to 7th place with equal record with Yambol but with advantage in the direct games.

The game started good for the visitors from Varna who went ahead 10-2. Little by little the hosts managed to cut the deficit that went down to three points, 18-21 after the first quarter.

In the second they cut it to a single point but then Cherno More moved ahead again by a good margin, 24-32. Then the hosts scored 11 straight points and took the lead for first time after a triple by Mirkovic to make it 35-32. To the end of the game Cherno More never had the lead again. Rilski Sportist played very good in those minutes and managed to build a double digit lead at the break, 51-40.

Santos Martinez and Branko Mirkovic played really good in the first half as they had 15 and 14 points respectively and leading their team to overcome their deficit. Bryce Sheldon also had 15 for the visitors, but he scored them in the first quarter.

Gruev opened the scoring in the second half to give the host their biggest lead of the game - 14 points. The visitors cut it to 10 and for a few minutes the score was in that margin. With two minutes to go after a Boev's basket Cherno More cut it to 3, and then to 2, but Golubovic scored a basket and was fouled, converting the free throw to make it 68-63 after three quarters.

Cherno More went scoreless for the first 3 minutes of the last quarter and allowed their visitors to score 8 straight points that all but secured the win. In the final minutes the visitors managed to cut the deficit by little but didn't have any chance of winning as the players of Rilski Sportist held on for the win.

Santos Martinez showed he is in very good form as he was the best player on the court finishing with 25 points and 14 rebounds. Branko Mirkovic scored 16 and Momchil Petrov played his best game of the season with 15 points and 5 rebounds in a match that six Rilski Sportist players scored in double figures.

For the visitors from Varna Bryce Sheldon was the top scorer with 24 points while Bogdan Boev and Nikolay Kolev finishied with 11 and 10 respectively.

FULL STATS FROM THE GAME RILSKI SPORTIST - CHERNO MORE

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