Mārcis Šteinbergs (No. 12.) with team members | Photo: FIBA
Manrez’s “Baxi”, represented by Latvian basketball players Mārts Šteinbergs and Jānis Bērziņš, celebrated their fourth victory in the International Basketball Federation Champions League group tournament on their field on Tuesday, with Šteinbergs not scoring but Bērziņš missing out. “Baxi” beat Karsijaka’s “Pinar” from Turkey with 88:69 (21:19, 21:16, 17:15, 29:19).
Steinberg was on the court for three minutes and 37 seconds, during which he threw the only two-point throw to the basket, broke the rules once and finished the match with a +/- score of -7. Bērziņš was not included in the application of the Baxi unit due to an injury to his right leg. In the Manrez team, Joe Thomas was the top scorer with 21 points and six rebounds, while Ishmael Bako scored 20 points and 11 rebounds. Amats M’Bajs scored 28 points and seven rebounds.
The Latvian team has played four games without losing any of them and ranks first in the group, while the Turkish team with two victories is second.
In the regular tournament, 32 teams are divided into eight subgroups of four units each. The winners of the sub-groups will immediately secure a place in the first round of the play-off, where they will be joined by eight more units, which will be determined in the play-in series between the second and third place teams in the group. It is planned that the winners of the play-in tournament, the eighth final and the quarterfinals will be determined in a series of up to two victories. The teams that make it to the quarterfinals will enter the Final Four, where they will compete for a prize pool of one million euros.
The Spanish club “San Pablo” of Burgos triumphed in the finalist tournament in Nizhny Novgorod in May, defending the title won last year. In 2020/2021, the fifth season of the tournament was played. In the first three years, basketball players from Tenerife’s Lenovo, Athens AEK and Bologna’s Segafredo Virtus were crowned champions.
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