Sharp shooters Fersped Rabotnicki swept aside Feni Industries

Fersped Rabotnicki found their amazing three-point shooting form they had previously shown in the Group stage of the Eurohold Balkan League and used it to completely demolish Macedonian rivals Feni Industries at the semifinal stage of the competition. Fersped scored a total of 13 three-pointers, most of them in a very strong first-half performance, to win by a whopping 62-90 score. That semifinal game was expected to be as close and dramatic as the first one, as the two teams knew each other very well and had very little to choose between them in all competitions during the season so far. But it turned out a one-team show.
 
The opening few minutes of the game were the most competitive, as Fersped Rabotnicki did take an early lead, but it was a slender one - not more than 3 points. With the scores at 8-11 though Fersped scored 2 of their trademark triples in consecutive possessions to take a frisk 9-point lead. After a partial Feni come-back (12-17), their opponents netted another trey to make it 12-20 and kept that 8-point advantage until the end of the quarter. It was actually a 6-point one with a few seconds to go to the end of the period, but in the very final second before the buzzer Bojan Trajkovski finished move drawn by his coach Marin Dokuzovski during the time-out and made it 18-26.
 
In the opening minutes of the second quarter Fersped Rabotnicki continued with their great shooting from behind the arc and the advantage they had was suddenly up to 17 points - 22-39. With another 2 back-to-back triples they led by more than 20 already - 25-49 - with more than four minutes of the first half still to go. Now all they had to do was hold on to that advantage and they did - it was 34-55 in favor of Fersped at half-time.
 
In those opening 20 minutes alone Fersped Rabotnicki had 10 three-pointers out of 17 attempts, while Feni Industries had just 1/8. But it was not only the perimeter scoring and defending that wasn`t working for the team from Kavadarci. Virtually nothing was going Feni`s way and they had little if any hope of making it to the final, as they went out on court for the second half.
 
Fersped opened the scoring in that one with guess what... another bomb from downtown. Feni responded with a triple of their own, but it remained their only basket of the second half for a long time, while Fersped were still thriving in offence. As that third quarter went on they went close to and over the 30-point margin and it was becoming more and more clear there would be no miraculous turn-around. The Feni players had now resigned to their fate and lost that third quarter by 10-25 to trail 44-80 with 10 minutes to go.
 
Fersped had even reached the 40-point mark with their advantage, after they scored the first 4 points in the last quarter. But then they expectedly lost concentration and allowed an 11-1 run by Feni, which cut the margin to 30. None of the teams had any urge nor reason to push it in the remaining few minutes and the game ended at 62-90.
 
Bojan Trajkovski was the top scorer for the winners with 18 points, Dime Tasovski added 15 and Nenad Zivcevic 10 with both of them netting 3 treys apiece. Filipovic contributed another 10 points for the victory.
 
Guard Taliek Brown had 19 points for the losing side, but Donald Cole was the only other Feni player with a double digit tally - 10 points, but with a poor FG shooting ratio - 3/10.
 
In tomorrow`s final at 18.00 local time Fersped Rabotnicki faces home team Rilski Sportist, while Feni Industries will have to forget tonight rout and rally for a bronze medal battle versus Serbs Mega Hypo Leasing.