The Spanish side set a new club record with 39 first-quarter points
Strong start paid off for Joventut against Trefl
Makale
3 Dk okuma
Joventut Badalona managed to smile again after a three-game losing streak thanks to a hard-fought 92-89 victory against last-placed Trefl Sopot in front of its home crowd.
The visitors had the last possession to tie the game, but a contested three-point attempt missed by Jakub Schenk didn’t go in and allowed the Joventut supporters to celebrate again.
“A win is a win. The whole team is happy that we won. I mean, we needed a win bad in the EuroCup,” Joventut’s top scorer on the night, Yannick Kraag, admitted after the game. “The game didn't go as we wanted. But I think it's always good to win as a team. I think everybody contributed, everybody played hard, and we fought to the end, and I think the last few possessions we executed really good.”
What Kraag was talking about when he said it didn’t go the way Joventut wanted was in relation to the last three quarters of the game, as Trefl won those three periods 21-34, 17-20 and 15-18. With that in mind, how is it possible that the visitors lost the game?
The answer is, among other factors, a nearly perfect start to the game from Joventut.
The Spanish team trailed 6-8 early in the first quarter when all hell broke loose for Trefl. A 20-2 run in 4 minutes broke the game apart, and despite a Sopot timeout, the punishment continued with another 13-7 spark that helped the hosts amass a 39-17 lead at the end of the first period. It was a record-breaking scoring mark, as Joventut’s previous best offensive performance was 34 points.
At that moment, nine different Joventut players had scored already, and the difference kept growing to 44-17 when Pep Busquets became the 10th to contribute with a triple early in the second quarter. Moreover, Joventut’s shooting from two remained perfect, with Artem Pustovyi converting his team’s twelfth two-pointer in as many shots soon after. It was Sam Dekker, after 14:32, who missed the first two-pointer for Joventut after 13 attempts.
“The most positive thing is the victory and the first quarter,” Joventut head coach Dani Miret recognized. “Then we had the same problem we had in a lot of games; the physicality, the rhythm, the capability to compete to the limit.
“We had it an amazing performance in the first quarter. And after this first quarter, we didn’t play as we were supposed to do. Everything that is not our hundred percent is not enough to compete at this level. We lost the next quarters, but finally, in a very tight last minutes, we were able to we finish with a victory that that allows us to keep on fighting for the next games.”