By Melody Gross )
The Lions maintain their aspirations to reach the playoff quarter-finals on a night in which Marcus Lovett shined and was an offensive engine, finishing the match with 30 points.
In a game that was not at a disadvantage at all, they led by 20 seconds (79-59) before the end of the third quarter, beating Lithuanian Jonava 103-88 (24-14, 24-24). (31-23, 24-27) In a match in the fourth round of the second round of Group L of the European Cup, Sporting maintained its ambition of reaching the quarter-finals of the tournament. He clears his throat.
To achieve this, Pedro Nuno Montero's men, who only achieved victory in the opening round specifically against Jovana – and have yet to win a game at this stage – will have to climb up to second place, currently occupied by Polish side Legia. D. Warsaw, with the same four points, which lost in this round at home to the leaders of the Turkish Bahcesehir College with a score of 66-77.
By scoring 19 of his 30 points in the first half (48-38), Marcus Lovett (4 res, 5 res), who came off the bench when the score was already 6-0 and immediately helped the team to a surprise score of 17-4 , was one of the main figures of the Lions, who almost every time they played with speed and transition, disturbed the opponent interested in acting more slowly, especially due to the absence of some of their members due to injury.
When this was not the case and the team lost some team communication and less defensive intensity, Jonava, which started with low shooting percentages from outside and without imposing big players near the rim, improved after the second place (43-35) and the third period was reduced (59-51). ) to 8, and tried the final conversion on the scoreboard with 3.32 meters remaining with part of 0-6 (90-91), but Sporting responded with another part of 9-0 (93-101) ) as Eddy Ekior (20 points and 8 accuracy) and Ron Curry (18 points, 11 accuracy, 6 ass) with 7 and 4 points, respectively.