Nymburk wins big on the road to stay alive

CEZ Basketball Nymburk led from start to finish en route to 63-84 road win over Zenit St Petersburg, keeping alive its eighthfinals chances. It's a second consecutive victory for the Czech champs, improving them to 2-3 record in Group G, the same as Zenit, and both teams will need to win next week in order to have a chance of advancing. Nymburk now also holds a tie break advantage over Zenit, having overcome a 12-point home loss from Round 1. Nymburk built a double-digit lead with a strong finish of the first quarter, then broke the game open with a 0-9 third quarter run that gave the visitors their biggest lead of the night, 44-67. Nymburk never looked back, as Christian Burn paced the winners with 16 points, Tre Simmons netted 14, while Darius Washington and Vojtech Hruban each had 13 for Nymburk. Walter Hodge scored 15 for the hosts, Artem Vikhrov had 12, while Dejan Borovnjak collected 11 points and 9 rebounds in defeat.

The entire starting lineup contributed, and Burns scored a pair of baskets as Nymburk opened the contest with 1-8 lead. Hodge had a layup and a three-pointer for the hosts, before feeding Pavel Spridonov to cut the deficit to 12-14. But Washington hit from downtown, and Burns had a fastbreak layup in a run capped by back-to-back triples from Simmons and Derek Raivio for 18-29 after 10 minutes. Zenit scored on four consecutive trips down the floor to start the second quarter, but another Raivio triple helped keep the margin in double figures. A three from Pavel Houska and a basket-plus-foul from Burns helped extended it to 31-46, but Spiridonov nailed a triple to end a half, and cut it to 38-48.