European Prospects

The first day of the Nike International Junior Tournament is history and the day ended nearly with a massive upset as the 2008 champ FMP Belgrade won against the hosts of ALBA Berlin by only 1 point.

• It was Branislav Dekic that scored the game winning layup with 5 seconds to go in a thriller game that was dominated by the ALBA defense and Dejan Musli’s offensive presence. A last second three pointer by ALBA missed its goal and the Serbian could celebrate their first victory. Dejan Musli had no opposition in the paint as ALBA had only one real Center and the Serbian big was guarded mostly by PF shorter than 2m. That’s why we saw ALBA set up different defenses in order to slow down the FMP game. Malte Ziegenhagen scored 4 out 6 three pointers to be the main offensive threat for ALBA while Niels Giffey was off with only 3 out 12 shots from 2.
• Unicaja beat Montepaschi behind the efforts of their bigs Augusto Cesar Lima and Malick Fall.
• For Lietuvos Rytas, it was Osvaldas Matulionis that helped them to overcome Hemofarm Vrsac, despite being fouled out in the final minutes. Jonas Valanciunas was present in the rebound but had also foul trouble and did not finish the game. Hemofarm had a good team effort, but it was not enough to come up with the win at the end.
• I can add nothing about the first game of the tournament as it was already over when I arrived at the gym. A gym that saw lots of fans and executives right from the first day on. Multiple NBA teams are in the arena too and the number of representatives will increase by tomorrow. Unfortunately though that the games are played simultaneously on two courts so that it is impossible to follow all the games during the day.