Only five minutes needed Lietuvos Rytas to win against Partizan BC (@EuroCup)

In Belgrade, in front of approximately 5.000 people in the “Aleksandar Nikolic” Arena, Partizan NIS BC lost in the second round against Lietuvos Rytas with a score 80 – 91.

It was an equal game during 35 minutes and Partizan was leading during that period but in the last five guests from Lithuania managed to turn the score and win the game.

The best scorer was Rokas Giedraitis with 28 points and interesting fact was that he scored 20 points in the first half, and no other player in both teams had double digits then. Giedraitis added 7 rebounds also. Great game had also Loukas Mavrokefalidis with 26 and 6 rebounds.

In Partizan, Patrick Miller scored 24 points, Nigel Williams-Goss added 11.

First points came from Strahinja Gavrilović and soon after Djoko Salic and Vanja Marinković were successful for 6 – 0 for Partizan. Even though black and white started furiously, guests from Lithuania made comeback and in the first quarter result was 15 – 17 for hosts.

In the second quarter, guests had furious start but Partizan player didn’t back down and it was an equal game. Five minutes till the end of quarter result was 28 – 28. The rest of the first half was similar as before, both teams played good offensively, and defense wasn’t that bad either. Second 10 minutes were finished with a score 43 – 39 for black and whites.

Third quarter started a little slowlier than the first two, but club from Belgrade managed to control the game during that period. They made mistakes in defense, allowed opponent offensive rebounds but smart shots helped them to finish the quarter with 2 points lead (62 – 60).

Patrick Miller scored first points in the last quarter. Soon after guests were taking a lead but after 3 minutes, score was 68 – 68. Little more than two minutes before the end Lukas Mavrokefalidis made three points shot and guests were leading by 5 (74 – 79), and in the next attack he also made two points shot, while Partizan missed two opportunities. Mavrokefalidis and Jimmy Baron combined for all the points in an 0 – 11 run late in the fourth quarter that helped Lietuvos Rytas to have the maximum lead one team had in the game. And with that lead guests finished the game (80 – 91).

After the game head coach of Lietuvos Rytas, Rimas Kurtinaitis was satisfied with a victory in Belgrade: “It is always difficult to play in Belgrade no matter against which team, Partizan or Red Star, they have really good fans, it is always great atmosphere, so I am really happy that our team won. We have started terrible but we get back to do game and finished with victory. Five minutes in the game was happy to watch”, said the head coach of Lithuanian team.