Unicaja tipped off its games in Group A of the Nike International Junior Tournament with a 58-43 victory over KK Split Croatia Osiguranje on Thursday evening in Paris, France. The winners held the lead throughout most of the game, but the gap at the final buzzer is misleading, as Split gave a good fight for more than 30 minutes, but scored only 2 points in the last 5 minutes to allow Unicaja to write a 15 point win. Three players scored 12 points each for the winners - Malick Fall who added also 10 rebounds, Deme Mambaye and Rafa Freire. Split saw 12 points by Toni Katic and 10 points by Esben Reinholt. Tomorrow Split will face FMP and Unicaja will try to maintain a perfect record against Benetton Basket.

Katic scored the first points in the game, but Fall dominated the paint and with quick 6 points gave his team a 10-7 lead. The Czech Jan Svandrlik scored 5 in a row to bestow Unicaja an 18-12 lead after 10 minutes, but despite a 4 minute drought Split stayed in the game with tough defense. Filip Najev scored from the arc and added a dunk to lead a Split run, but now it was Freire's turn to slam the ball and write a 29-21 Unicaja lead, right before the break. Reinholt scored from distance for the last basket of the half, and also the first basket of the 2nd half, to make it 29-26 after 22 minutes. Mambaye combined 6 points to push the gap again to 9, but Katic and Reinholt didn't allow Unicaja too much distance ahead. Svandrlik and Reinholt exchanged three pointers, but when the 4th quarter started both sides went silent. After 3 scoreless minutes Katic scored from the line to make it just 45-39 but that's as close as Split got. The Croats combined only 6 points in the entire 4th quarter, and when Freire and Fall wrote back-to-back dunks inside the last minute Unicaja wrote its biggest lead in the gap and reached 15 point difference with the buzzer.