Sigal Prishtina holds off Balkan but everything will be decided in Botevgrad

The 1/4 finals in Delasport Balkan League started tonight with Sigal Prishtina beating Balkan 85-83 at home. In that way the Kosovo side took a 2-point advantage in to the second game in Botevgrad as everything will have to be decided there. Balkan win by 3 or more points will send the team to the Final 4 while Sgai needs to either win or to lose but by no more than 1 point. In case of Balkan win by 2 points the match will go to overtime. In tonight's game Sigal Prishtina led from start to finish, at times by double-digits, but Balkan showed character to comeback and be close. In the final minutes the visitors were able to keep the difference small and at the end they are leaving Prishtina down by just 2 points. The decisive Game 2 will be played on April 20 in Botevgrad.

Thanks to a quick 5-0 run early in the game, the hosts managed to take an 8-3 lead and build on that advantage after. They were up for the whole first quarter and at the end of it went up by double-digits leading by 10. Following an 8-3 start to the second, the home side went up by 15 points. After that moment Balkan finally started playing defense and started cutting some of the deficit. The visitors didn’t come too close to the opponent but thanks to a triple 20 seconds before the final buzzer of the first half, the closed the gap to 7 points after 20 minutes.

A better start to the third quarter allowed Balkan to cut the deficit to just 1. Sigal though responded with 6 points in a row to pull away once again, but the visitors always stayed close. With 3:07 to play The Greens managed to tie the score at 79 but then the home side had 4 in a row. What followed was few misses for both sides before Rorie hit a tough lay-up. Balkan had the chance to tie again but with 27.7 seconds to play, Dugat took the difference back to 4 points. In the next offense Minkov scored 2 points with 3.3 seconds left and then Sigal didn’t score so the game finished.

Wendell Mitchel was the top performer for the hosts finishing with 19 points and 5 assists. Da’Quan Cook did well by adding 15 points and 7 rebounds as Jetmir Zeqiri had 14 points.

The visitors were led by the captain Dimitar Dimitrov who finished with game-high 20 points. Ahmaad Rorie played an important role adding 19 points, 7 rebounds and 5 assists as Christian Jones had a double-double with 13 points and 10 rebounds.