

"We need to stop their offensive rebound, we need to stop their open shots," Buducnost VOLI Podgorica head coach Petar Mijovic said at halftime when his team had allowed 14 offensive rebounds and had been outrebounded 16-29 overall against visiting 7bet-Lietkabelis Panevezys. The result was a 31-38 deficit at that moment, which doubled, to 35-49, early in the third period.
His team didn’t give up, though, and followed Mijovic's instructions. Buducnost reacted fiercely and punished its opponent with an 18-1 run to enter the fourth quarter leading 53-50 and finished winning 76-65 after outscoring Lietkabelis 41-16 in the last 16 minutes of the game.
The Buducnost improvement came from the places Mijovic pointed out at halftime. First, the hosts managed to secure their defensive glass and didn’t allow a single offensive rebound to the visiting team. Overall, Buducnost outrebounded Lietkabelis 19-13 in the second half, which was one of the keys that took it out of rhythm.
And second, the hosts locked in on perimeter defense and controlled much better Lietkabelis's scorers. As such, the visitors got just 9 field goals in the second half - five two-pointers and 4 threes - from 24 attempts (37.5%).
Many of Lietkabelis's offenses in the second half could not even finish with a shot, as Buducnost forced 12 turnovers in that period, which destroyed its opponent's confidence step by step. The result was a 7-1 balance in fastbreak points at the end of the game, as well as a 19-12 advantage in points off turnovers.
"When we were minus 14… we played again very good defense, from this defense we made some easy points in transition which was really important and necessary for our team," Mijovic stressed in the press conference.
Obviously, he was happy with the result, especially because his team had held Lietkabelis to only 65 points.
"We played against a really talented team, that played three games already in their national championship and in all of them, they were on 90 points or more."