BK JIP Pardubice –  GKK Šibenka 82:67 (20:16, 19:12, 17:12, 26:27)

Referees: Martin Margala, Stanislav Bara, Artjoms Ribakovs (all Slovakia)

Audience: 205

Venue: Sportovní hala Dašická, Pardubice

Scorers – Pardubice: Šafarčík 25, Potoček, Svoboda and Švrdlík each 11, Vyoral 9, Walton 6, Burda 5, Pekárek 4

Scorers – Šibenka: Arslanagić 16, Rebić and Paić each 11, Solomun 9, Gulin 8, Jambrović 7, Antić 4, Kujundžić 1

Pardubice was in the lead the whole game. Point guard Petr Šafarčík scored 11 points in the first quarter and mainly thanks to his production, the home team was quickly in the lead with 18:6 points. Šibenka helped themselves a lot with offensive rebounding (seven in the first quarter!) but they had bad shooting statistics, nevertheless they lowered the home team’s lead to only five points in the half of the second quarter (29:24). In the third quarter Pardubice heightened their lead again, to 15 points (43:28) and from this passage they got the game under their control definitively. By the turn of the last two quarters, in stages from the 30th  to 32nd minute, they scored 15:3 points, by which they heightened the difference in the score to the maximum of 24 points (66:42). Šibenka was better only at offensive rebound, but from that, they didn’t take advantage in the game (second chance points 11 to 10), on the contrary, Pardubice used all 18 opponents losses to gain 18 easy points.

Post-game quotes:

Dino Repeša, coach of Pardubice: “Mainly in the first half of the game you could have seen, that we were playing our third game in the last five days, we were a bit tired. But I think, that this is not the reason for having 13 less rebounds. Yes, we are a shorter team then Šibenka, but we have to be more concentrated and stronger at rebounding. What is positive, is that we are playing good in offence, we scored more than 80 points again, we had 19 assists but it is not a good way to lose every game at rebound. From our point of view, the second-half was much better than the first one.”

Michal Svoboda, player of Pardubice: “It was a very physical and hard game, first of all it was the third game in the last five days for us, but mainly because our opponents were taller and they played very physical basketball. We had a problem with defense rebounding and I think, that that is the main reason, why we couldn’t build a bigger lead in the first half. At the halftime break we told ourselves, that we need to do more and play more physically, which I think we did in the second half. We made a 20-point lead and we basically kept that till the end. We are very glad to win tonight’s game.”

Damir Milačić, coach of Šibenka: “First of all I would like to congratulate basketball team Pardubice and coach Dino Repeša, they deserved the victory. I have to be very proud of my guys, because yesterday we spent 15 hours on the bus and had almost no preparation for this game and that is the reason we had a terrible start tonight. We had a bad percentage in the three-point shoots and also free throws and that is the reason, that we lost the game. On the other hand, I am very satisfied with our rebounds, we had 47 rebounds and 16 offensive rebounds. We made a couple of mistakes, but we are a very young team so the players need a lot more games like this. We spent 15 hours on the bus, so that is why my players didn’t have the freshness they needed, but I can’t say anything against them today.”

Adnan Arslanagić, player of Šibenka: “We had a very bad start and we were behind the whole game because of that. We missed a couple of easy shots, but we had our chances and I think we played very good defence, our coach also said that in the locker room. We played a pretty good offense as well, we just missed the shots. We need to be more concentrated in the next games, but I think that we kind of redeemed ourselves after our last lost game. It was a good game for our team and now we just have to get better and we can’t wait for them at our place.”