First win for Lovcen

KK Lovcen Basket had its first win of the season in group B of SIGAL-UNIQA Balkan League. The team from Cetinje stopped the run of five straight defeats by downing BC Levski 2014 68-61 at home. The hosts were down for most of the first half but in the second they took the lead. Then after a good start to the fourth quarter they held off the Bulgarian side with more experience and took the victory. Still Lovcen are with 1-5 record and the chances to reach the third place are slim as they need two wins. Levski on the other side had its third straight defeat and with 2-3 record will probably need to defeat Bashkimi in Prizren in order to avoid the qualification round. This game will be in two weeks time while Lovcen will play in Prizren on January 12th.
 
After a few exchanged baskets, Levski managed to pull away after two triples to go up by 7. The hosts managed to get close to 3 points but the visitors finished the quarter on a 7-0 run. With almost four minutes played in the second the advantage was the same but then Lovcen′s defense improved. In the last six minutes they made a 12-2 run and tied the score at the break.
 
The hosts started very well the second half by making a 9-0 run in three minutes. Slowly Levski managed to come back to life and stayed close. Not only that but they scored 10 straight points to go up by 2 before Petar Jovanovic added a triple for the hosts to set up interesting ten minutes at the end.
 
A quick five points at the start of the fourth quarter took the home team advantage to 6 and they kept it after that. Levski missed a chance to come close when they were down by 5 in the middle with five minutes to go in the game but later the visitors did it. With 1.50 to play the deficit went down to just 3 points but then Knezevic grabbed an important offensive rebound and scored for the hosts. Aleks Simeonov followed with two missed free throws for Levski and after that the Lovcen finished off their opponent.
 
The visitors made 26 turnovers which led to 23 points for Lovcen while the hosts had 17 turnovers but Levski scored only 8 points off them.
 
Milos Latkovic and Mikaile Tmusic were the top scorers for the winners with 19 points each. Latkovic added also 9 rebounds and 6 assits while Tmusic had 6 rebounds.
 
Evgeni Hadzhirusev and Aleks Simeonov both had 13 points for the visitors with the second adding also 11 rebounds. Krum Doychinov also played well with 11 points and 15 rebounds.

---

FULL STATS FROM THE GAME KK LOVCEN BASKET - BC LEVSKI 2014