Lukoil made the first step

Donta Smith scored 24 points for Lukoil

12-05-2007 22:54

Lukoil Academic made the first step towards retaining the title after beating CSKA 92-84 in Pravets.
The champions started perfectly the game and had 11-0 lead after 5.05 minutes of play when Dimitar Anguelov scored one free throw. To the end of the first quarter the hosts increased the lead to 15, 26-11. The second quarter was controlled by Lukoil Academic for much of the time but near the end of it the visitors started to play good and cut the deficit to 10 at the break.
In the middle of the third quarter the hosts had difficult time and allowed the visitors to come as close as a single point but in the final 2 minutes again the champions improved to 6 point lead before the last 10 minutes. The last quarter was even right until the final 2 minutes when the players of CSKA made some mistakes and the hosts took advantage of that stealing off the win at the end by 8 points.
Donta Smith and Lamont Jones led the way for Lukoil Academic with 24 and 23 points respectively. For CSKA Greg Danielson was the high man with 19 points.
Next game between the two teams will be on Tuesday again in Pravets.