Pamesa Valencia celebrated the last game of the ULEB Cup regular season as it had many of the others, with a comfortable 90-69 home win, this one over visiting Telindus Oostende of Belgium. Pamesa thus closed the first phase with an 8-2 record, good for second place in Group B. Oostende finished with the worst overall record, 1-9, but the game in Valencia had no value for the standings, as the Belgians were already out. Pamesa advances to the next round, and will know the name of the next opponent after Wednesday draw. For now, it was enough for the Spanish team to take an ovation from the home fans for another impressive victory, this one for the quantity of drawn fouls (28), great team contribution and dominant rebounding. Pamesa was led by Bernard Hopkins, who nailed 21 points, added 8 rebounds and made 9 of 11 two-pointers. He was followed by excellent Victor Luengo, who drilled 14 points coming off the bench. Forward Federico Kammerichs added 14 also, while Alejandro Montecchia contributed 13. Oostende found 15 points by Rimantas Kaukenas, 14 by Cristophe Beghin and 13 by Ralph Biggs, who were the only players able to score double digits.
Pamesa took early lead thanks to Hopkins working the post, but Oostende stayed into the game thanks to Rimas Kaukenas, who scored 7 important points in the first quarter. Pamesa found important baskets by Alejandro Montecchia and deepened the lead at the end of the period taking 8 points advantage after 10 minutes (25-17). The guests played good basketball at the beginning of the second partial, and thanks to Ralph Biggs, who scored 10 points in the first half with two threes, took small lead after 5 minutes (Pamesa scored only 4 points in 5 minutes). Once again, Montecchia gave the right push to his team, which started exploiting the enormous rebounding lead (45-18 at the end, 15 offensive for Pamesa) running on the break and hitting easy baskets. Beghin just stopped the slide at the end, and at halftime Oostende had only 7 points to make up.
The guests resisted at the beginning of the third quarter, but suffered Pamesa's deep roster; Jose Antonio Paraiso drilled a couple of key baskets, followed by Victor Luengo, who sank 5 key points to set another important run. Pamesa had 13 points to defend at the beginning of the last period (67-54), when Hopkins started being a thorn on Oostede's side once again. A 16-4 run in the first 5 minutes of the last period with Federico Kammerichs and Victor Luengo once again closed the game (83-58), which was controlled by Pamesa till the final buzzer.
Friday, January 17, 2003
Eurocupbasketball.com