Jaunumi

The second International Amateur Basketball League (IABL) Tournament in Kaunas. A lot of beautiful fights and surprises

On December 13th in Kaunas, the second International Amateur Basketball League tournament took place at A.Sabonis BC , where 6 matches were played. During the first match site hosts from Kaunas were the first to come out to the field with their principal rivals from Vilnius. From the start of the match the fortune was on the side of players from Kaunas, who were little by little gaining point advantage and didn‘t even allow their rivals to think about a victory. The hosts acted as inhospitable ones and won the match against their opponents in unbelievably advantaged score 94:70.

During the game the best player from Kaunas was Karolis Pupinis who scored 21 points, he recaptured 13 balls and made 6 assists, the second was Leonardas Ivanovas- scored 20 points and the third Arminas Šaulys - scored 15.

The following players from Vilnius team were: Martynas Grinius scored 21 points, Gediminas Poviliauskas – 16, Dainius Novickas – 14 points.

For the second match, representative players from Latvia and Russia came out to basketball court. In this match players from Latvia showed far more efficient playing then their adversaries and won easy victory, which resulted 108:84.

For Latvian team the most points were scored by Arturs Kamins – 24 points, for Russians Sergej Timaškov scored 25 points.

The third match was the most interesting one as a team from Belarus and the Ukrainian team defending its champions title met. From the first minutes of the first half there was a brutal fight between rival teams, both teams wouldn’t allow each other to gain the upper hand in the fight and the last minutes of the game were the most decisive ones, so the Belarus team celebrated very hard and sweet victory with the result 74:62.

Roman Veremeijčik scored 15 points for the winners, Aleksej Poltorackyj – 13 points for the Ukrainian team.

For the fourth tour match there was a fight between team of Vilnius and guests from Russia. The Lithuanian team after losing a game against rivals from Kaunas released their anger on the Russian team and crushed Russians with the score of 121:59.

The top scoring player from Vilnius was the relentless Dainius Novickas who scored 29 points, for the Russian team it was Alexander Žerebcovas who scored 18 points.

In the 5 th match Ukrainian and Latvian players challenged each other in a fierce fight. This meeting was very interesting and also intriguing. After an easy victory Latvians demonstrated their fitness, whereas Ukrainians after an incurred defeat against Belarus were a little bit distracted and didn’t show much enthusiasm in the field. Those who expected a suprise and a victory for Latvians were very close to a positive guess, however Ukrainians during the match were chasing Latvians to make an even score in the end of the last quarter showed their champions character and by a small margin of 5 points have won the game in a result of 72:67. This fragile victory has proved that it will be quite difficult to anticipate this year champions as the level of the level of league has become even.

Ukrainian Pavel Uopič scored 21 points, and Latvian Martinš Motivans scored 18 points.

And finally, the principal tour match was between host team from Kaunas and the powerful Belarus representative team. At the start Kaunas had a trouble to get into tune with the rythm of the match, and however throughout the game they were always on their chase to their rivals, at right moment during the last quarter they made a break through their game and they snatched a very important and hard earned victory with result 84:72.

Biggest contribution to the victory of Kaunas team was because of Karolis Pupinas (21 points, 12 rebounds, and 7 fouls) and Artūrs Pelšs (21 points, 6 assists, 7 fouls).

For Belarus it was Dmitrij Tumašik who scored 15 points and made 17 rebounds.

It was very cramped up at the end of the 2nd tour matches standings. Ukrainians stand in the first place striving to defend the champions title, 4 teams in the standings are in the following: Kaunas, Vilnius, Latvia and Belarus, of which each has 2 victories and the team representing Russia is at the bottom of the standing. So after the first tournament you could distinguish the leaders and the outsiders, during the 2 nd tournament the result took the initial position, so all the teams will have a chance to prove what they are worth for once again and to work hard for the sake of victory , which is difficult to achieve.

Here is a list of players rewarded as MVP during the evening celebration in the following:

Dainius Novickas (Vilnius, Lithuania)

Anton Timakov (Russia)

Martinš Motivans (Latvia)

Dmitrij Grečkin (Ukraine)

Artūrs Pelšs (Kaunas, Lithuania)

Dmitrij Tumašek ( Belarus)

Also the absolute MVP of the tour is Karolis Pupinis (Kaunas, Lithuania)

Next tour which will be organised by Russian delegates in February, 2015.