USK Future Stars Prague opened the Barking Abbey Academy Euroleague Basketball Junior Classification Tournament games with a 73-65 triumph over Banca Sella Biella in Group B on Thursday afternoon in London, England. The team from the Czech Republic used a good third quarter performance to take over the lead, and hold on to it all the way to the final buzzer. Despite a bad day from the arc with just a single three pointer in 13 attempts and 24 turnovers, the future stars of Prague used an advantage on the glass to finish on top. Ondrej Balvin was on fire for Prague with 20 points and 12 rebounds, Jan Hartman added 15 and Jiri Stariat collected 12 points. Eric Lombardi was the top scorer of Biella with 19 points, William Magarity added 12 and Stefano Stassi had 11.

Hartman led Prague to an early 8-2 advantage, but Stassi and Lombardi made sure their team will be behind just by a single point, 20-19 after 10 minutes. Stariat added another basket with a slash to the rim and didn't allow Biella to take over the game yet. Lombardi had enough and teamed-up with Stassi again to produce a 2-12 run and reach a 31-39 lead, yet Hartman and Balvin answered with an 8-2 run and entered the break down by just two points, 41-39. Hartman and Balvin combined plays to send the lead back to Prague, but a big dunk by Lombardi cut the margin to two again, 52-50, but that's as close as Biella came in the second half. Balvin took over the game, and scored 10 points in the last quarter, six of them in a row right after the rest, to make it a 67-54 game. Biella made one last push to write just a 6 point gap on the scoreboard, but didn't get closer than that.