The first game of the Lions in the Euroleague was rather successful for the home team only for the first five minutes. A crowd of 3500 were satisfied that Hamilton became the first player to score a basket. But AEK took advantage because Betts was very brave and reliable in defense tasks. Veskovic?s time out arrived too late: 9:16 on the scoreboard. The Lions played awfully, without any ideas in attack and adding turnovers to their statistics. The great man-to-man defense of the Greek team didn?t allow the Lions to perform a good shot selection. Even Maltsev, the most popular player in St. Petersburg and having a deserved fame of great shooter in his native city, didn't score a 3 pointer during the whole of the first half and ended the game with only 9 points due to three 3 pointers. At the same time, AEK's shooter, Kutluay, was very successful in his attempts to destroy the rival basket (14 points with 3 baskets beyond 6,25 out of 5 attempts). Muursepp, Dikoudis and Hadzis helped with their 41 points among the three as well. The Lions didn't score a basket during the last five minutes of the second quarter, therefore, the difference grew to 16 points and the 30 Greek supporters began to celebrate their team's victory. The game ended in the third quarter, because it was like both teams forgot everything they know about the game, with no defense at all. The players that came from the bench in AEK seemed better than the main players in the Lions. With 3 minutes remaining, the Lions were dead but they didn't want to admit it, and they scored a final 6-0 run which sweetened the defeat for the Russian supporters.