


ratiopharm Ulm pulled out a valuable home 97-85 win against Cedeveita Olimpija Ljubljiana in Round 16 that has kept its hopes alive of securing home-court advantage in the playoffs of the 7DAYS EuroCup.
The German team had several reasons behind wanting to beat the visitors, as, in addition to it helping its goals ahead of the playoffs, the 108-78 defeat it suffered against the same opponent in Round 7 still resonated in it’s the hosts' heads.
“We are happy with this win,” Ulm head coach Anton Gavel stated in the press conference. “We lost against them by 30 in the previous game and we knew it was going to be a tough one, knowing that [Yogi] Ferrell and [Josh] Adams can get hot every single night and every second."
One of the factors that made the difference for Ulm in this game was the joy it had from the free-throw line. Despite a balanced stat line in terms of fouls, with Ulm committing 22 to Cedevita's 24, the home team went to the line 10 more times (34 vs. 24) and had a far better percentage. Ulm scored 30 points from the charity stripe (88.2%), while Cedevita made 19 (79.2%), which means 11 more points in a 12-point win.
Cedevita head coach Miro Alilovic pointed to this in his post-game press conference: “I can be satisfied with the will of the players to prepare for the game, with big desire. And from this big desire, we were over aggressive too many times and we allowed them to make too many free throws." It was a similar story with Coach Gavel. “Offensively we were attacking the basket, which allowed us to have 34 free throws, which was good. We found a way, as always, to score a lot of points.” Ultimately, Ulm's joy from the free-throw line proved key en route to an important victory.