Koeln Survive Leuven Fightback

RheinEnergie Koln started fast but then had to hold on at the end to open their EuroCup campaign with a 69-63 victory over Basket Groot Leuven in Group B.

RheinEnergie, playing at home, stormed out to a 19-8 advantage by the end of the first quarter, Janar Talts' dunk giving them an 11-point lead.

Leuven fought back and closed to 32-28 at half-time.

Then, just past the midway point of the third quarter, the visitors closed to 40-37 after a Balázs Simon jump shot.

RheinEnergie kept their noses in front but came under serious threat in the final minute.

Fortunately for them, Leuven did not make all their free throws.

Simon, on consecutive possessions, was fouled and each time was only able to make of one two from the free throw line as Leuven closed to 64-62.

After Aleksandar Nadjfeji split two from the charity stripe himself for a 65-62 lead, Leuven had a chance to make further inroads but Rogier Jansen missed a lay-up.

Though Hungarian Simon grabbed the offensive rebound, his attempted put-back was swatted by Nikola Vucurovic.

The home side then made four free throws at the end to seal the win. Sasa Obradovic, the RheinEnergie coach who once played for Yugoslavia's national side, felt his players had eased up and should have won more convincingly.

"I am not satisfided with this victory," he said. "We didn´t play 100% during the whole game."

Marcin Gortat, RheinEnergie's center, also found it difficult to celebrate victory.

"We played bad today," he said.

"We were making too many small mistakes. We defended the tough shots well, but the easy ones poorly.

"We weren't concentrated enough before and during the game.

"We have to work on today's mistakes to be prepared for the next games."

Nadjfeji, a 2.02m forward from Serbia & Montenegro, led Koln with 19 points on eight of 10 shooting.