Lukoil Academic remains undefeated in the Championship

Willie Deane

09-04-2008 21:21

Lukoil Academic beat Levski 100-79 in the “derby” between the first and the second team in the season standings for the Bulgarian Championship. In front of 300 spectators in Pravets the hosts had no difficulties with the “blues” and took their 30th consecutive victory in 30 games this season. Thus they are still undefeated in Bulgaria this year and it looks as if they are going to end the season that way.

Lukoil Academic’s coach Zheljko Lukaic decided to make an experiment leaving Pero Antic and Todor Stoykov at the bench in the opening minutes. Even without them in the starting line-up the “students” were still able to take the lead from the beginning after a basket by Riste Stefanov and a triple by Willie Deane. From that moment on Levski were trailing throughout the whole game and despite their efforts to play as equals the difference in the classes between the two teams was obvious. Lukoil Academic won the first quarter 31-19 and during the second managed to increase their lead by to more points, leaving the court at the half-time break with a comfortable 14-point lead.

After the break Levski tried to surprise the champions, who played more slackly, reassured by the course of the game until this moment. The “blues” won the third quarter 19-21 but that was the best they could do in this game and after 28-19 in the final ten minutes left the court with a loss.

Willie Deane had the most impressive performance in the game with 31 points (8/13 from the three-point arc), 5 rebounds, 5 assists and 3 steals. He was well supported by Pero Antic with 21 points and 6 rebounds and Riste Stefanov with 15 points. Todor Stoykov played only 14 minutes in this game scoring 11 points (3/3 triples). Zheljko Lukaic decided to give more playing time to Chavdar Kostov but this was definitely not his game as he didn’t manage to score even once for 19 minutes on the court, grabbing only 1 rebound for that time. The young Petroslav Zafirov, Blagovest Spasov and Kalin Hristov once again played only about 2 minutes each and Zafirov was the only one who scored in the game.

Rob Preston was the top scorer for Levski with 20 points to which he added 9 rebounds. Two more players reached more than 10 points for the team – Stanislav Slaveykov finished with 13 and Yulian Radionov had 12. All the players listed for the game appeared on the court for Levski as Cvetelin Ivanov was the only one who didn’t manage to score a point.