Spartak St Petersburg and Valencia protected home with wins while Buducnost couldn’t stop Kuban in this Wednesday night.
Three more games in the first leg of quarter finals played today and we start our journey with a road win from Lokomotiv Kuban 54-72 against Buducnost Voli.
An 8-26 run in the beginning of the third quarter was the key to control the entire game and will be a tremendous deficit to cut in the second leg in Russia.
Ex NBA Derrick Brown had a brilliant performance of 17 points and 8 boards for the Russians with point guards Mantas Kalnietis and Nick Calathes both scoring in double digits dishing 11 assists between them too.
On the Montenegrin side only veteran Cedomir Vitkovac tried to fight against a much powerful squad with 14 points and 7 boards, continuing his good performances on this year Eurocup.
The second of three Russians teams playing today was Spartak St. Petersburg who defeated Budivelnik Kiev in their arena 83-72.
It was a well-balanced game where Spartak had the league for most of the game only trailing at the end of the 3rd quarter 57-58. In the start of the last 10 minutes Dragicevic took responsibilities and put the home team ahead never looking back until the end.
Beautiful team effort for the Russians with 5 players scoring in double digits (Darius Odom-Johnson watched the game from the bench). Zach Wright with 18 points and 7 assists and Loukas Mavrokefalies with a 17 and 7 game were the main threats on offense for most of the game.
Leo Lyons and Artur Drozdov showed why they are two of the main guys in this year’s Ukrainian squad finishing with 21 and 17 points, respectively. Malcolm Delaney, the star of this team only had 11 points and 6 boards.
The only losing team for Russia in today’s games was Unics Kazan who clashed against Valencia Basket and took a 70-80 defeat on the road.
Valencia had the lead for the most of the 40 minutes only letting Unics cut the deficit to 4 in the 3rd quarter that was instantly responded by Doellman and Dubljevic on the offensive end which created the biggest gap at 57-44 that was controlled until the buzzer.
For the Spaniards, sensation Bojan Dubljevic with 21 points and Justin Doellman 18 points, 8 boards and 5 steals were essential for this win at home.
On the Unics side, Chuck Eidson wasn’t at the level that he showed in the last games but Terrell Lynday played a huge game with 6-6 from 3 point range for a 28 point performance.
