Balanced Joventut beats Reyer

Joventut Badalona remained undefeated on the 7DAYS EuroCup season by pulling away in the second half for a 92-78 home victory over Umana Reyer Venice. Vladimir Brodziansky paced six Joventut scorers in double figures with a career-high 15 points for Joventut, which improve to 4-0 in Group A. Ante Tomic and Nenad Dimitrijevic both added 14 points, Pau Ribas and Xabi Lopez-Arostequi both had 13 and Conor Morgan chipped in 11 points for the winners. Lopez-Arostequi also grabbed 8 rebounds and Tomic collected 7 rebounds and 5 assists. Reyer dropped to 1-2 despite Stefano Tonut and Andrea De Nicolao both scoring 13 points and Mitchell Watt and Michael Bramos chipping in 12 points apiece.

Ferran Bassas completed a three-point play to start the game for the hosts before Austin Daye and Bramos hit three-pointers to give Reyer a 6-8 lead. After another Bramos triple made it 10-13, Ribas scored 5 points in an 8-0 spurt to make it 18-13. Tonut sparked a 0-9 answer and Reyer led 24-26 after 10 minutes. Reyer built a 28-36 lead early in the second quarter with Tonut hitting a three-pointer. Joventut fought back as Brodziansky drained a triple and Lopez-Arostegui tallied 8 straight points for a 41-40 advantage. De Nicolao’s triple temporarily put the guests back ahead, but the game was even at 45-45 at the break.

Bramos and De Nicolao hit three-pointers to put Reyer ahead 47-51 early in the second half, but Tomic began to take over with 8 points in a 14-4 Joventut run for a 61-55 advantage. Gaspar Vidmar scored to get the gap down to 2 only to see Brodziansky answer with 5 straight points and 2 more free throws to give Joventut a 73-65 advantage after 30 minutes. Brodziansky’s three-pointer to start the fourth quarter extended the margin to 11 points, 76-65. De Nicolao answered with a triple, but Dimitrijevic followed with 3 points and Morgan had 4 in pushing the margin to 85-71 with 4 minutes left. Vidmar managed a three-point play, but Reyer could not get closer than 10 points the rest of the way.

Pivotal performer

Vladimir Brodziansky continued his excellent season with a career-high 15 points; he shot 2 for 3 on both two-pointers and three-pointers and made all 5 of his free throws to go with 1 rebound, 1 assist and 6 fouls drawn for a career-high index rating of 20. The Slovakian forward has scored in double figures in all four games thus far. He is averaging 12.3 points in 20 minutes while shooting 66.7% on two-pointers, 42.9% on threes and 91.7% on free throws. This is his first season in the EuroCup after playing for Obradoiro in Spain for the last two seasons.

Did you notice

Reyer head coach Walter De Raffaele was running out of players down the stretch. Four Reyer players - Austin Daye, Andrea De Nicolao, Gasper Vidmar and Mitchell Watt - fouled out of the game.

Telling numbers

Joventut won the rebounding battle 35-28 including 12 offensive rebounds to 7 for Reyer. That led to 17 Joventut second-chance points to just 2 for Reyer. Joventut also forced 15 turnovers and turned the ball over only 10 times. The home side also connected on 64.1% of its two-pointers.

Next games

Joventut heads back on the road for its third road game in the first five rounds, traveling to play at UNICS Kazan on Wednesday, October 28. Reyer returns home to host Bahcesehir Koleji Istanbul the same evening.