Euroins Cherno More win, Feni Industries lose but get 2nd place

In the closing fixture of the regular season in Group A of the BIBL Bulgarians Euroins Cherno More got an important home victory over Macedonians Feni Industries - 83-74. The win meant the hosts secured at least third place in the final Group A standings. The visitors though were able to keep their margin of defeat down to less than 15 points, which meant they would finish second in the table. Thus in the final standings behind clear winners Swisslion Takovo it`s Feni in 2nd with a record of 4-4, Cherno More - in 3rd with the same record but a negative score out of the two games with their opponent and Radnicki 034 Group in 4th (3-5) and bound to play Group B winners Rilski Sportist in the quarters. As for the quarterfinal matches of the Lions, Feni and Cherno More - they all depend on the outcome of tomorrow`s last regular season game in the other group (Fersped Rabotnicki vs Mega Hypo Leasing).
 
Tonight`s game in Varna was very close and full of twists and turns during the first half and the opening few minutes of the second. Then Cherno More took the lead for good and up until the end the one question left was whether they would be able to win by more than 14 points and get that second place in Group A. And the answer was - no.
 
In the opening minutes offences prevailed over defences and both team`s possessions resulted in points. Thus it was very close and no one took more than a 2-point lead. Brazilian center Atila Santos had started very strong for Cherno More, as he netted the first six points and continued to dominate the opposition`s paint in that first quarter. Despite that his team`s somewhat shaky defence allowed Feni to become the first team to take a slightly bigger lead in the game - 10-16, thanks to a 0-7 run. Until the end of the quarter the visitors were able to keep most of that advantage, mainly thanks to the offensive input of their American players - guard Taliek Brown and center Donald Cole. The period finished at 25-29. Atila Santos had had a magnificent first 10 minutes, scoring 16 of those 25 points for the home team.
 
Feni`s star center Cole, who had also had a good opening quarter offensively (8 pts), was taken out of action in the entire second, since he had committed 2 quick fouls; or maybe because coach Emil Rajkovic didn`t want to strain him too much in a game with no significance for qualification. As the American sat on the bench Cherno More initially took advantage and it took a minute and a half for them to post a 7-0 run and lead 32-29. Then Zlatko Gocevski scored twice and Feni peeped in front once more. Then the scores were tied at 38-38 but an even stronger run (0-9) by the visitors made it 38-47. The last two minutes of that first half belonged to the hosts and they had their own run of unanswered points (7-0) to trail by just two at half-time - 45-47.
 
Atila Santos was no longer as hot under Feni`s basket as he had been in the first quarter (just 2 in the second and only 4 more in the remaining two 10-minute periods after that), so the momentum of Cherno More`s offence had shifted from the front to the backcourt. But it temporarily returned to the paint for the opening few minutes after the break, as young reserve center Nikolay Kolev assumed the role of Santos as an inside scoring force and tormented the Macedonian team`s defence for a while. That, accompanied with some good defence, was enough for and 9-0 run, after Feni had briefly gone in front (47-50) at the start of the second half. From that 56-50 onwards the story of the game was simple - Cherno More were trying to increase their lead up to that 15-point margin they needed to overtake their Macedonian opponents in the group standings, while Feni were doing their best to not let that happen.
 
Julian Radionov`s 3rd triple in the game came with the buzzer to end the third period - 68-61. The fellow Cherno More guard Corey McIntosh took over from him and was hard to contain in the fourth, trying to justify his reputation as BIBL`s top scorer so far. Eventually, he managed to become the leading scorer for his team in tonight`s game too, but as it often happens when someone starts doing the "Kobe thing", his team didn`t achieve it`s maximum goal. At one instance (with 6`41`` to go) they were in front by 14 points and were on the brink of it, but less than 3 minutes later Feni Industries had brought their deficit down to just 6 and were even threatening to turn it all around. Cherno More held on to their win though and made it a reasonable 9-point margin at the end.
 
Corey McIntosh finished with 25 points (13 in the last quarter) while Atila Santos reached a total of 22. Julian Radionov had 13 off the bench.
 
Four of Feni`s players scored in double didgits - Taliek Brown led that quartet with 16, the other guard Milan Prekovic had 15 (with 4 assists), Goran Samardziev netted 14, while Donald Cole scored even less in the last three quarters than his counterpart Santos and finished with 12.