BK ARMEX Decin vs. Swans Gmunden
96:71 (17:11, 53:27, 72:47)
Referees: Salvetr Rudolf, Hartig Lukas, Svoboda Martin
Audience: 654
Venue: ARMEX Sportcentrum
Scorers BK ARMEX Decin: Carlson 28, Autrey 16, Pomikalek 12, Vukosavljevic 11, Jezek and Siska 10, Kroutil 7, Festr 2, Bobek and Zikla
Scorers UBSC Raiffeisen Graz: Barton 21, Friedrich and Murati 14, Loveridge 7, Ogunyemi and Blazan 6, Schartmuller 3, Guttl and Hieslmair
Eventhough there is holiday in Decin, nice amount of fans came to support Decin in their historical first home AAC semifinals and made nice atmosphere. Decin started strongly, gave to hosts only touhg shots and managed to score from good positions, mainly from paint. After 5 minutes took a lead 11:0, but Gmunden got quickly back with 0:9 run. As Decin used energy and intensity to run fastbreaks and be little more effective taking a lead after 10 minutes 17:11.
What seemed to come in the very start of the game, was confirmed in second quatre when home team made 5 threepointers but was able to use its strong weapons to score as Czechs were shooting 52% (while 50% from beyond the arc) going to halftime break. Connected with good defens it all meant 26 point lead for Decin 53:27.
As Gmunden is very good team, it was expected that coach Mirolybov’s team will try to come back or get the deficit lower. Especially Barton took it seriously and led Gmunden to small win in third quatre as the game was very tied but Barton’s 8 points in a row gave Austrians some energy to fight 72:47.
Last quatre was a fight for every inch, as both teams felt this game means only “halftime” in this serie. Basket here and basket there was a sign of last 10 minutes and it was again Barton who closed the game with threepointer (overall 5/8 from three) with 2,8 seconds left and finished the first AAC semifinals game on the score 96:71.
Tomas Grepl, head coach of Decin: Thank you for congratulations. We are happy for the win. We managed to play well in first half. It is still only first game so it is not over. I will talk to my players and remind them that we lost second half. So we expect tough game there in Austria, of course we have some leadership in points, but we take it also as a preparation for A1 league group and playoffs. We want to go to Gmunden to fight for a win there.
Klint Carlson, player of Decin: We came out strong, the way we wanted to start. Last two weeks we have been working really hard. Also I am happy that we shot well and played well together so it is nice that the hard work is paying off and hopefully we can take this momentum to the league game on Sunday in Usti and get a win there.
Anton Mirolybov, head coach of Gmunden: Congratulations to the home team, they played excellent basketball, they were more agressive than we were. For sure we have been having three weeks without games so you could see it was tough to come and play after one practise after the national team break. The point difference is little too big, but let’s see what we can do in a week.
Daniel Friedrich, player of Gmunden: We came out very slow, started bad, but still kept it kind of close after first quatre, eventhough we started bad. Then we just totally lost it in second quatre. We stopped playing defense, they punished every mistake and they got too big lead that we couldn’t come back.
