BK KVIS Pardubice – Oberwart Gunners 93:63 (25:15, 31:15, 21:19, 16:14)
Referees: Peter Ženiš, Martin Margala, Artjoms Ribakovs
Audience: 629
Venue: Sportovní hala Dašická, Pardubice
Scorers – Pardubice: Čolak 21, Rikić 12, Pekárek 11, Burda 10, Švrdlík and Štěrba each 9, Svoboda 8, Vyoral 6, Potoček 3, Vrábel and Lukeš each 2
Scorers – Oberwart: Howard 12, Knessl 11, Poljak 10, Gardner 9, Hanes 8, Rauch 5, Patekar and Wess each 3, Kaeferle 2
Pardubice completely dominated in the game and they determined their clear victory in the first half. Oberwart tried to keep up for the first few minutes of the first quarter (in the whole game they were in the lead for only 72 seconds) thanks to the five ball losses, that the home team managed to do. In the end of the first quarter Pardubice parlayed the difference to be double digit, after the point string of 9:0 from the beginning of the second quarter, they were in the lead by nine points and at the end of the 19th minute Mateo Čolak scored a three point shot and made the difference to be 30 points (56:36). The ratio of points scored from fast breaks was 17 – 0 in the first half!
In the third quarter, Renato Poljak scored 8 points in four minutes and reduced the difference to 64:42, but the difference kept being over 20 points for the rest of the game. Thanks to good teamwork (17 assists in the first half, 28 overall) Pardubice made a lot of points from open shots on the contrary, Gunners relied on points from the three-point line but they weren’t very successful with it (23,5%).
Post-game quotes:
Vanja Miljković, assistant coach of Pardubice: “We prepared very well for the game but in the halftime we were not satisfied with our control of the rebound. We tried to change that in the second half but unfortunately, we weren’t able to do so much. We tried to keep a big rotation and a high rhythm as we did in our last three games. I need to say that with maximum respect to our opponent today, we are not fully satisfied with our defense, especially defensive rebounds. That is of course connected with our offensive rebounds, where we are also not satisfied. I need to repeat, that I’m saying this with big respect to Oberwart, but a team of our level cannot give chances like that to a team like Oberwart. So we really need to work on that for our upcoming game on Saturday.”
Matěj Burda, player of Pardubice: “I think we played very well in the first half, 56 point is a lot for the first two quarters. We tried to share the ball a lot and because of that, we had a lot of assists and open shots. I think every player in the team scored some points in today’s game, which is not a usual thing for us. Our opponents scored only 30 points in the first half, so we wanted to continue with our offense and defense in the second half. I think we dominated on the defense rebound, but Oberwart had 18 offensive rebounds, which I think is a lot, we need to control that in our next games. But I believe we were also aggressive on the offensive rebound or when we tried to stop their counterstrikes. Unfortunately, we eased off a bit in the second half but we still maintained the lead and ended up winning by 30 points. Now we need to continue with our game, because we have a tough match on Saturday, which we need to focus on.”
Horst Leitner, head coach of Oberwart: “Pardubice played much more of men’s basketball, I think we played like a youth team. I think they approached the game way better than we did and they wanted it more than we did. It was visible on the court, that they wanted to win every little battle. You could see it in the way they approached defensive rebounds and also the way they tried to get offensive rebounds. Even in the offense they tried more and they were willing to go where it hurts, unlike us. We had parts of the game, where we competed, but in the important times we didn’t do anything, and we looked like fools. Pardubice were much more disciplined on the court and in the way, that they just wanted to win more today. We were probably too cocky and we found out early in the game, that we were not ready today.”
Renato Poljak, player of Oberwart: “We didn’t execute from the beginning. We had a plan, which worked for the first four or five minutes, but then they started making shots and they started being creative in their offense and we didn’t stop them, we didn’t do anything. We didn’t play our defense and we didn’t score very much in our offense in the first half, we haven’t scored any points in the whole 5 minutes once. We were trying to change that in the second half but they scored 10 points very quickly in the beginning and we weren’t able to do anything about that. They just kept scoring, we weren’t able to stop their pick-and-roll, we weren’t able to switch in the defense, we didn’t have control over the ball in the offense. In the end, congrats to Pardubice because they won fairly and squarely, and we just have to learn from that for the next time.”
