The basketball players of Chernomorets played a second difficult match against Shumen. The visitors led for almost the entire first half, relying on their superior long-range shooting. However, they never pulled away by more than 5 points. Only in the second half did the home team win 85:83.
As expected, Chernomorets came out of the dressing room for the second half extremely motivated, quickly made a turnaround after 11-0, and then increased the difference to 10 points.
Although the home team led by 12 at the beginning of the last period, Shumen did not give up for a moment. The visitors responded with an 11-0 run of their own to get back into the game. With two minutes to go, the gap was reduced to just a single point.
Travis McConico tried to bring his team the victory with five consecutive points, but Barash Mustafa brought back the intrigue in the last minute with a three-pointer for Shumen.
From there, it went through a bunch of stoppages of the game, violations, challenges from the coaches, and after execution of penalty kicks and misses there, in the end, the victory remained in Burgas.
“I don’t know what to say today. It’s like I’m disappointed with the behavior of the players, to underestimate Shumen. Five minutes before the end we thought it was game over after a dunk. I told them, the game isn’t over until the siren blows at the end of the game. Unfortunately, this was one of the ugliest games we’ve played this year.
I did not like the behavior, the body language of the players was under all criticism. We shot 55% from the penalty line, which could have cost us the game in the end. I’m ashamed. We are last in the league in this indicator. Next week we won’t shoot any, next week if we go against Levski and shoot 30% it will be my fault. We can’t do the simple things right now, 15/27 from the foul line. A victory is a victory, but I am not satisfied,” coach Vasil Evtimov commented.
Chernomorets will finish the second round in the Sesame NBL with a visit to the last Levski, for Shumen the battle for the eight will be until the last. On February 16, the team hosts Yambol in a direct match in an attempt to get into the Cup, but things already depend on the other teams ahead of them.
Sean Smith had a double-double with 17 points and 11 rebounds, 17 points and McConico.
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