FMP earned its second victory of Day 2 at the Citta di Roma tournament in the Italian capital by downing CSKA Moscow 66-58 late Monday to finish Group B in second place. FMP climbed to a 2-1 record, good for second place in the Group B, and a date in the third-place game on Tuesday with the corresponding finisher from Group A, which was Stella Azzurra. CSKA dropped to 1-2 to finish third and face Montepaschi Siena of the parallel group. The tournament in Rome is the first of four qualifying competitions held around Europe to decide four of the teams to participate in the Nike International Junior Tournament that is part of the 2010 Euroleague Final Four event in Paris, France. CSKA lost this morning after a double overtime match and yesterday won by a single basket margin so another thriller was more than expected, but FMP, who missed the promising Nenad Miljenovic, had different plans, and within 6 minutes already held a 16-2 lead. CSKA recovered and cut the margin to as little as 5 points in the closing quarter, but didn't put FMP's win in jeopardy. Nikola Siladi led FMP with 19 points and 8 rebounds. Nemanja Bezbradica added 15 with 8 rebounds, too, while Strahinja Mladenovic added 12 points. Alexander Tikhonin led CSKA with 15 points and Artem Komolov had 13 points.
FMP scored the first 11 points in the game on its way to a 16-2 lead. Bezbradica was the active force in FMP with 11 first-quarter points, exactly the amount the entire CSKA squad totalled after 10 minutes ended 28-11. Five different CSKA players scored as their team stormed back to the game. The Serbian side went out of focus and didn't score for the first 6 minutes of the second quarter, as CSKA cut 11 points off the margin. Siladi broke the spell to spark a 9-2 FMP run until the half-time buzzer, and set the score on 37-24. After two great games CSKA's big guy Andrey Loginov didn't find his rhythm and finished with only 2 points which made it difficult for his team to write another come back. Nevertheless Tikhonin and and Komolov led a 2-10 run going through the late third quarter to the early fourth, and set the gap on no more than 5 points, 55-50, but FMP replied in time. Milos Zivkovic scored 5 points in a row before the squad from Moscow missed a crucial three-point try that could have made it a one-possession game, but resulted with FMP securing the win.
Euroleague.net