European Prospects

Here are a few thoughts about the first day of the Hospitalet Tournament. As I am not in Spain, all what I say here is based on what I have found on the web.

• Pamesa Valenica looks like a very equal squad with 3 guys in double figures and 4 other players between 7 and 9 points. The same counts for CSKA that even had 4 guys in double figures but it was not enough to beat the Spaniards
• Pau-Orthez is surely not the best that France has to offer actually but they defended their chances quite hard against Estudiantes behind a nice effort of Pierre Bonnelalbay and Jonathan Leira. But it was not enough against the 21pts and 7asts in 26 minutes of Sergio Lorente, coming of the bench.
• FMP had no trouble to beat the hosts even without Dejan Musli who was not on the Zeleznik roster. It must have been a real three point show by the Serbs as they finished at 10/18 behind a great shooting effort by Andreja Milutinovic who had 6/8.
• Maybe the most intense game was the matchup between Cibona and Joventut. Cibona won the game in the final seconds thanks to a FT by Marko Petrovic (nephew of Drazen) and a steal to seal the victory. Tomislav Zubcic and Sven Smajlagic were the main contributors the Croats with 16 respective 20pts while Dimitri Kriukov was the main scorer for the Catalans.
• Real won their first game in the tournament against Pamesa with a good game by the Montenegrin forward Nikola Mirotic who had 23pts and 13rebs. Ignacio Esteban added 18pts while Pamesa was once again very equaled behind top scorer Bozhidar Avramov who had 15pts.
• Barcelona comes up with a huge team around top talent Nihad Dedovic who had 25pts in the opener. He gets supported by some African talent in the person of Papa Abdoulaye and Michel Diouf. For Estudiantes, it was Antoni Vicenc who came up with 27pts.

More info about Day 1 in Spanish can be found here or here