U18 Virtus Bologna will play for third place at the Euroleague Basketball ADIDAS NEXT GENERATION TOURNAMENT Qualifying Tournament – Torneo Citta di Roma after beating U18 CSKA Moscow 68-57 on Monday. Danilo Petrovic collected 21 points, 6 rebounds and 4 assists for Virtus, which improved to 2-1 to secure second place in Group A. Lorenzo Penna added 16 points and 4 steals, Mirko Carella had 13 points and Tommaso Oxilia chipped in 11 points as Virtus will take on the second-placed team from Group B on Tuesday at the AGNT Rome. CSKA dropped to 1-2 despite 14 points and 8 rebounds from Andrei Lopatin and 11 points from Artem Kuzmin while Mikhail Andrianov was held to just 6 points. CSKA locked up third place in Group A and will play for fifth place.
Oxilia opened the scoring for Virtus with Petrovic registering the next 4 points for a 6-0 lead before Nikita Soldatov hit CSKA’s first points. Petrovic added 4 more points as the Italian club pushed the margin to 14-2. CSKA didn't score its second basket until 6 minutes into the game by Lopatin. It was 16-4 before Kuzmin's three-pointer and another score by Kuzmin made it 16-9 after 10 minutes. Isacco Lovisotto and Michele Ebeling scored early in the second quarter to increase the gap to 20-9. Kuzmin and Alexander Khomenko both knocked down three-pointers before Lopatin trimmed the deficit to 23-19. After Ebeling pushed the lead to 6 points, Roman Derevyankin cut it to 25-22. But CSKA could not come up with defensive stops as both Carella and Petrovic scored and the lead was 30-22. After averaging 19 points in the first two games, Andrianov finally picked up his first points against Virtus on a three-pointer with 50 seconds left in the first half. But Petrovic nailed a three-pointer at the buzzer and Virtus was up 35-26 at intermission.
Khomenko started the second half with a three-pointer to cut the margin to 6 points. Virtus then went on a 10-0 run with Oxilia scoring 4 points for a 45-29 advantage. Andrianov stopped the scoreless drought and Lopatin had CSKA to within 47-33. Petrovic was on target again to start a 7-0 spurt for a 54-33 lead. Carella added 3 points as the cushion increased to 59-35. Khomenko’s three-ball made it 59-38 after 30 minutes. Carella got the fourth quarter under way and made it a 23-point game. As the Virtus offense sputtered, CSKA started to close the gap with Konstantin Shevchuk hitting 2 three-pointers and Aleksandr Ershov adding a basket and 2 free throws as the lead was down to 61-49 inside the four-minute mark. Virtus could still not score and called a time out after Kuzmin made it 61-51 with 2 minutes left. After Carella snapped Virtus’s seven-minute scoreless streak, Lopatin got a tip-in for CSKA. But Penna answered with a three-pointer to decide the game for good.
Monday, December 28, 2015
David Hein, Euroleague.net