Montenegro won Award of Sofia tournament

Montenegro with the Cup of Sofia (Photo: Gong.bg)

09-08-2009 23:42

Montenegrin National Team participated at the tournament in Sofia as part of preparations for Division A qualifications. Other than Montenegro and hosts Bulgaria, Cyprus and Belarus also took participation on this tournament. In Round 1 Montenegro was better than Cyprus while Bulgaria managed to beat Belarus. In Round 2 Bulgaria routed Cyprus while Montenegro outplayed Belarus. So all was set for the decisive Round 3 where Bulgaria and Montenegro were deciding the tournament winner. In the end it was the Montenegro. which easily won and took the trophy after beating hosts 88-65.

It was Montenegro who controlled the game from the opening and they managed to keep the lead. In the first quarter, Montenegrin players came out strong and managed to build 11-point lead as the score after 10 minutes of play stood at 23-12. In the second quarter we saw more of the same, as Bulgarian players could not find a solution for Nikola Pekovic (210-C-86) who was strong in the post. As result, Montenegro increased the lead and at the half they had 50-27 advantage. After the break, Bulgaria continued to struggle offensively missing a lot of open shots. Montenegrin players took advantage of this and punished Bulgaria on the other end scoring 23 points in the quarter. They limited Bulgaria to only 8 points and with 10 minutes left in the game, Montenegro held 73-35 lead. At that point it was clear who the winner will be and Head Coach of Montenegro Dusko Vujosevic used the last quarter to give all of this players a chance. Bulgaria used this to cut the lead as they won the last quarter by 14, but that was enough only to cut the deficit to final 88-65.

For Montenegro, Nikola Pekovic led the way with 15 and he was closely followed by Vladimir Dasic (208-F-88) who scored 13 and Omar Cook (186-G-82) and Predrag Drobnjak (212-F/C-75) who added 11 apiece.

For Bulgaria, only 3 players finished with double digits and they were Chavdar Kostov (196-G-88) who came of the bench to score 15 , Andre Owens (192-G-80) added 11 and Dejan Ivanov (205-F/C-86) who finished the game with 10.