Venice win back-and-forth showdown with Cedevita

U18 Umana Reyer Venice opened its Adidas Next Generation Tournament Belgrade with a hard-fought 76-85 victory over U18 Cedevita Zagreb. Davide Carasin paced Venice with 20 points, 4 rebounds, 5 assists and 3 steals while Nicola Berdini scored 18 points and Alvise Minincleri had 14 points in the Group A encounter. Daniel Pavicic was Cedevita’s leading scorer with 22 points and had 6 assists while Aleksa Gataric picked up 21 points, 8 rebounds, 2 assists and 4 steals and Karlo Lukacic added 12 points and 13 rebounds in the loss.

Pavicic and Gataric combined for 9 points in giving Cedevita a 9-6 lead early, which Venice answered in tying it at 11-11. Andre Skelin’s basket had the Croatian side up 18-13 and the gap was 18-16 after 10 minutes. Neither team could pull away in the second quarter with the biggest lead being 3 points with 4 ties and 6 lead changes until Berdini and Minincleri hit back-to-back three-pointers to put Venice ahead 39-43. The score was 41-43 at the break. Giulio Candotto’s basket early in the third quarter put Venice up 44-49. Renato Serdarusic completed a three-point play and Pavicic nailed a three-pointer in a 12-2 Cedevita run to pull ahead 61-54. Venice responded with the final eight of the third quarter to go back ahead 61-62. After 13 ties and 10 lead changes in the first 30 minutes, Venice never gave up the lead in the fourth quarter. Minincleri hit two three-pointers and assisted on Berdini’s triple to make it 63-71. Another Minincleri assist ended in Casarin’s three-pointer for a 69-76 lead. Casarin completed an and-one to put Venice ahead 72-79 and Cedevita could not score in the final 1:30 minutes.