By Johnny Askounis/ info@eurohoops.net
After six straight losses in the Basketball Champions League, including three in the ongoing Regular Season, and despite missing Mikhail Kulagin sidelined along with Evgeny Baburin, Nizhny Novgorod also overcame a sluggish start to beat Lavrio Megabolt, 74-62, on Wednesday.
Experienced point guard Ivan Strebkov combined 15 points with eight rebounds and seven assists in the Round 4 fixture. Serbian important Nikola Jovanovic, Rolands Freimanis, and Sergey Toropov all added 12 points each. Anton Astapkovich chipped in 11 points.
Outrebounding the visiting Greek team, 48-22, was obviously key for the team coached by Zoran Lukic to jump to 1-3 in Group C and hold Lavrio to 2-2. Besides the BCL, Nizhny Novgorod is currently 4-2 in the VTB United League and the team led by Christos Serelis sits at 4-3 in Greece’s Stoiximan Basket League.
Lavrio went up by a margin of five points early in the first quarter but was limited to a catchup role for most of the 40 minutes. Down the stretch, the main goal was to secure the tiebreaker advantage, but the nine-point win in the recent reverse fixture was not enough.
Jerry Smith poured a game-high 23 points at CEC Nagorny. Center Dimitris Kaklamanakis followed with 12 points. Tyson Carter went from the 35 points at home opposite the Russian team to seven points going through foul trouble in Nizhny Novgorod.
Round 5 action will send the winning side to Unicaja Malaga, while Lavrio will visit JDA Dijon.
Postgame press conference:
Photo Credit: Basketball Champions League