By Eurohoops team/ info@eurohoops.net
Darussafaka Istanbul won the first continental title in the history of the franchise after beating Lokomotiv Kuban 67 – 59 in Game 2 of the EuroCup Finals and sweeping the best-of-three series in front of their home crowd.
After earning season MVP honors, Scottie Wilbekin led Darussafaka to the EuroCup trophy nearly single-handedly, with a phenomenal performance of 28 points and 30 PIR.
The American guard also hit what was proven to be the dagger of the game with a 3-point bucket that made it 61 – 54 for David Blatt’s team with two minutes remaining. Loko didn’t manage to recover from that deficit.
Wilbekin was rightfully named Finals MVP since he had also delivered a game-winning display he had in the first Final with 24 points/5 assists.
“We just did what we always do. Play hard. It wasn’t easy to get to the Finals. But we got battle-tested, we showed we can be here and now we are champions,” Wilbekin said after the match to Euroleague TV.
Joe Ragland (18 points) and Brian Qvale (12 points) were ones that mainly tried to pace the guests through a comeback from a double-digit difference but their team was unable to cut the margin to lower than four points down the stretch.
This was just the second loss of the season for Lokomotiv after Game 1 in the Finals. They had a 20-game winning streak prior to the title series.