Rilski Sportist start second phase of Bulgarian NBL with a loss

Bulgarian BIBL competitor Rilski Sportist men team opened the second phase of their domestic National Basketball League (NBL) regular season with a loss away at Spartak Pleven - 99-90. With the first phase finished now all the teams in the NBL had played each other twice (home and away), except for CSKA, whose results have been annulled, since the club has dropped out of the league. So Spartak Pleven and Rilski Sportist were the first two of the remaining 7 teams to face each other for the third time in the NBL this season. They had traded away victories in the first phase, but tonight it was not to be for visiting Rilski Sportist. The team from Samokov had a stable, but not quite inspiring peformance (14 points, 6 boards) by their star center Travis Peterson, who has shown in the past that he can do much better in tough games. They also got 27 points on the night by guard Branko Mirkovic, but that wasn`t enough for a win.
 
No one was able to dominate the first 5 minutes of the game in Pleven, until the hosts scored in five consecutive possessions with Rilski Sportist failing to score on their five meanwhile. That made the scores 29-16 and the first quarter ended at 31-21.
 
From the start of the second the point difference stayed at 10-11, but then Spartak had a run of 6 and led by 17 at 45-28. The visitors reacted, as their bench players started scoring too, and they had an 8 point run of their own to cut their deficit to 9, but eventually trailed by 15 at the break.
 
The hosts made a good start to the second half too and even led by 18 points, but then Peterson and Mirkovic started hitting the target more consistently and brought down the margin to around 10 yet again. From here on in the game was totally in the balance. But that balance was in favour of Spartak, as the Pleven team led by those 9, 10 or 11 points all the time till the very end. Branko Mirkovic was having a good night of three-point shooting though (5-8), with his young fellow Serb Dragoslav Papic trying to follow closely in his steps. Papic hit his 3rd triple of the night to gave the visitors some final hope with a minute to go (93-85), but then Topchov scored, the Rilski Sportist team lost the ball, Rosen Sofroniev scored too and it was all over. The game ended after one more basket by the hosts and a couple by the visitors.   Rilski Sportist have an away game versus Fersped Rabotnicki next Tuesday in the Eurohold Balkan League Group B last round. If the Bulgarians win that one, they`ll win the group and play the 4th-placed team from the other group in the quarters.