Unicaja Malaga cruised to a 57-88 victory over Virtus Bologna to start off action in Group B of the ADIDAS NEXT GENERATION TOURNAMENT in Rome. Romaric Belemene-Dzabatou paced Malaga with 17 points and three blocks while Manuel Vazquez scored 16 points, Victor Aguilar collected 12 points, five rebounds, three assists and five steals and Jorge Turbica, Carlos Corts and Rares Uta each had 10 points. Malaga, which reached the final of the L’Hospitalet tournament last winter, improved to 1-0 in Group B while Bologna dropped to 0-1. Danilo Petrovic was Bologna’s leading scorer with 10 points while Roberto Vercellino collected six points, six rebounds, five assists and six steals.

Bologna was able to jump ahead 7-4 in the opening minutes before Malaga used a 1-9 run to go up 8-13. The deficit was 15-16 when Unicaja went on a 2-13 surge to lead 17-29 after 10 minutes - in which Belemene-Dzabatou had scored 10 points already. The margin was down to 19-29 and later 22-34, before Unicaja put all doubts to bed with 17 straight points. Corts scored six points in building a 22-51 lead, while Bologna was scoreless for 6:24 minutes. Virtus cut the margin to 26-51 and trailed 28-55 at the break.

Bologna had a strong start to the second half in cutting the gap to 23 points at 36-59. That would be the closest the Italian side would get as Unicaja scored nine straight points to push the margin to 36-68. The cushion was 44-72 after three quarters. Virtus would not get closer than 27 points, 46-73, the rest of the game and Malaga increased the advantage to 34 points.