Duo combined for half of Slask's points in the Turkish capital.
Niziol, Gravett come up big as Slask ends two long streaks
Jakub Niziol and Hassani Gravett produced star performances as Slask Wroclaw ended two long losing streaks in the BKT EuroCup with a 71-80 victory over Turk Telekom Ankara.
Niziol set a career high for the second straight game as he poured in 25 points and Gravett tallied 12 of his 15 points in the final 5 minutes as Slask won its first game of the season.
It snapped Slask’s 17-game EuroCup losing streak, dating back nearly an entire calendar year to December 21, 2022 with a 80-57 win over Dolomiti Energia Trento. The win also ended the EuroCup’s longest road losing streak in history, Slask having lost the last 26 games away from home dating back to December 11, 2007.
“It was a long time coming for this first win,” said Niziol, who tallied 21 points in Slask’s Round 8 loss to 7bet-Lietkabelis Panevezys. “We are going to enjoy this one.”
Niziol is one of four Slask players who were on the team when it won the last game in the EuroCup. He scored 9 points in that game last December. Daniel Golebiowski, Aleksander Wisniewski and Mikolaj Adamczak were the other three Slask players.
Slask won the game over Turk Telekom by shooting 64.0% on two-pointers and holding the hosts to just 41.1% on two-pointers and 18.2% on three-pointers - two areas the Turkish side had been struggling all season, averaging 48.2% and 32.0% coming into the gamer.
Slask survived Turk Telekom grabbing 26 offensive rebounds - just 1 shy of the EuroCup’s all-time record of 27. And the Polish side has been weak in that field as well, ranking 17th in opposing team’s offensive rebounds with 12.4 per game.
“Hopefully we can keep up the winning mentality after this first win. I know it’s not a lot, but it means a lot for us,” added Niziol.