Dolomiti Energia Trento has won seven of its last eight games
Trento keeps on rolling, shocks Besiktas with 13-point win
Game Report
3 Mins read
Regular Season
Round 16 of 18
Regular Season
group b
Dolomiti Energia TrentoTRE
8774
Besiktas GAIN IstanbulBJK
group b
Overview
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Dolomiti Energia Trento is one of the hottest teams in the BKT EuroCup right now, and its momentum shows no signs of slowing. After stunning opponents with back‑to‑back buzzer‑beater victories, the Italian club delivered its biggest statement yet, toppling Group B leader Besiktas GAIN Istanbul 87-74 – and doing it in style.
Trento didn’t just upset Besiktas. It dominated the Turkish side, rolling to an 87–74 victory that extended its winning streak to three games and marked its seventh win in the last eight. The surge has lifted Trento to 10–6 and firmly into the upper tier of the group standings.
Besiktas, meanwhile, avoided a completely lost night thanks only to Brynton Lemar’s 2 free throws with 13 seconds left, which preserved the visitors’ head‑to‑head tiebreaker after their 97-83 win in Round 7. But that was little consolation on a night when Trento delivered one of the most eye‑catching performances of the season.
“This is a big-time win for us. Beating Bestiktas - a really good team and really known in Europe - to come out with a win like that is really good for us,” said DJ Steward, who led Trento with 19 points. “We are feeling great. We just have to keep it going. I feel like our chemistry is getting really good.”
Steward got plenty of help. Matas Jogela scored 14 of his 17 points in the fourth quarter, Andrej Jakimovski posted 15 points with 10 rebounds and DeVante’ Jones chipped in 11 points and 5 assists.
“It’s a big win. I believe winning against Besiktas counts double. We did an excellent job. The team executed the game plan. We were solid and everybody accounted for this victory,” said Trento head coach Massimo Cancellieri. “I am personally happy about the effort we had on defense. For me, it’s a really sweet taste.”
Jones and Jakimovski started the game well and had Trento up 12-10, but both committed a second foul in the opening 6 minutes and were forced to the bench. Besiktas took advantage of that with a 3-14 run to take a 15-24 lead, which was 17-24 after 10 minutes.
Trento’s defense picked up as did its three-point shooting, with 3 triples in a 15-0 run over nearly 5 minutes to take a 32-26 advantage. The cushion grew to 9 points and the lead was 42-33 at the break.
Trento continued its push in the second half with an 18-5 surge to build a 20-point lead. The cushion was 66-49 after 30 minutes. Besiktas tried to get back into the game and at least secure the tiebreaker, but Jogela knocked down back-to-back triples for a 74-53 lead with 7 minutes to go.
After Conor Morgan scored 8 straight points to trim the gap to 13 points, Jogela added 2 more triples and it was 79-61.
Morgan twice made it a 14-point game and Lemar made a layup and then free throws with 13 seconds to give Besiktas a sigh of relief with at least the tiebreaker.
Besiktas’s standing in the group has been buoyed by a perfect 8-0 mark at home, but the Turkish side fell to 3-5 on the road and 11-5 ove all, snapping a three-game winning streak. Conor Morgan tallied 12 of his 17 points in the fourth quarter while Lemar and Jonah Mathews both had 11 points.
Besiktas admittedly was missing star big man Ante Zizic, who was out with the flu, but the team would have needed more than just him. The Turkish side shot just 41.5% on two-pointers and 25.0% on three-pointers while scoring 74 points with a team index rating of 81. All of those numbers were drastically lower than its season averages: 59.6% on two-pointers (ranked 2nd in the EuroCup), 39.4% on three-pointers (3rd), 94.2 points (3rd) and 108.9 PIR (2nd).
“Congratulations to Trento on their amazing series. This is their seventh win in the last eight games,” Besiktas head coach Dusan Alimpijevic said.
“They played very good, with good energy. They played with a great approach. Everything opposite of us. We played with a bad approach without energy. And we didn’t look like how we wanted to look.”
