Lukoil Academic won the first game vs. Spartak

Plamen Hristov

14-03-2008 20:43

Lukoil Academic took an expected victory in the quarter-final series for the Bulgarian Cup. They beat Spartak Pleven 88-71 in front of their own audience in Pravets, which puts them one win away of the semi-finals. The rematch is next week in Pleven, while the eventual third game will be in Pravets again, on 23th March.

Spartak’s hopes in this year’s edition of the tournament vanished in the moment when it became clear that Lukoil is going to be their opponent in the quarter-finals. At that moment everyone understood how important it had been to be among the first four teams in the season standings to avoid meeting the champions on the way to the Final Four.

The game was interesting only in the first quarter (26-22) and from that moment on Lukoil was in control of the tempo and dictated the situation on the court. For the guests, Bozo Barac and Melvin Abrams were injured and didn’t participate in the game and one of their most valuable players this season, Sasha Topchov, wasn’t in his usual form, which made it very easy for Lukoil Academic to win the game without any excessive efforts.

Four of the guest’s players finished with 13 points – Hrisimir Dimitrov, Vladimir Jojic, Todor Todorov and Iliya Stankov.

For the hosts two of the younger players of the club were in the men’s squad for the first time, Plamen Hristov and Vladislav Shuranov, but they couldn’t make their debut in the game after all. The kids probably won’t have another chance to play in such a game soon and all that’s left for them is to dream about the next time they’ll be in the roster and hope that when it happens they’ll have a chance to play for even a minute. Here we won’t even comment Petroslav Zafirof, for whom each game starts and finishes with the warm-up before the tip-off.

Pero Antic, on the other side, played 40 minutes without substitution for Lukoil, scoring 24 points and grabbing 17 rebounds. Larry O’Bannon finished also with a double-double, scoring 18 points and collecting 12 rebounds and Riste Stefanov, who came off the bench, added 5 three-pointers.

FULL STATS FROM THE GAME LUKOIL ACADEMIC - SPARTAK PLEVEN