U18 Mega Bemax Belgrade picked up its first victory of the Euroleague Basketball Adidas Next Generation Tournament Finals with a 75-60 win over reigning champion U18 CFBB Paris - in a repeat of last year’s Championship Game. Mateja Jovanovic collected 22 points, 9 rebounds and 3 assists for Mega while Altin Islamovic scored 13 points and Aleksandar Langovic picked up 11 points and 7 rebounds. Mega improved to 1-1 in Group A while CFBB dropped to 0-2. Essome Miyem had 17 points, 9 rebounds, 2 assists and 1 block for the champs from last year while Milan Barbitch and Timothe Crusol both scored 10 points.

Neither team scored in the first three minutes before Langovic, Islamovic and Luka Cerovina all hit three-pointers as Mega was up 9-0. CFBB finally scored at the 4:46 minute mark of the first quarter and trailed 13-2. They cut the gap to 16-11 before being down 21-13 after 10 minutes. Mega increased the lead to 15-25 but CFBB answered with 0-11 run with triples from Crusol and Rudy Demahis Ballou to move ahead 25-26. Mega pushed back ahead 32-28 at the break.

CFBB trimmed the deficit to 32-30 with the first basket of the second half but Mega went on a 10-0 run to regain control of the game 42-32. CFBB was able to get it down to six points but Marko Kljajevic came up big off the bench in sparking a 16-4 close to the third quarter and a 61-42 lead. Kljajevic’s next score made it 65-44 and CFBB would get the deficit down to 16 points at 65-49. But it would not get any closer the rest of the way until the final score of the game.