By David Broome, PA Sport

Winning the MVP award for the 2006 Promotion Cup was bitter-sweet for Albanian forward Gerti Shima.

Shortly before picking up his award, the 20-year-old had watched his side outplayed by Azerbaijan as the latter lifted the trophy with a 66-57 win on Saturday night.

He told PA Sport: "It's a big disappointment because everyone was getting ready for a big celebration."

Everything seemed to be in Albania's favour going into the title game.

They were playing as the host nation, and they had comprehensively beaten Azerbaijan 87-59 in the group stage.

But the visitors opened up a narrow 13-12 lead in the first quarter, and a scoring burst of 15-9 before the break gave them a seven-point lead they never looked like squandering, and Shima admitted they had been the better side.

"Azerbaijan played better than us that is for certain. But our team is new and quite inexperienced - our average age is only about 22.

"I don't think my performance was at the highest level here either."

He also believed the Eurasian side had a secret weapon in point guard Zaur Pashayev, who didn't feature against them in their first meeting, despite playing all the other group games.

"I thought number six (Pashayev) and number eight (Fuad Niftaliyev) played very well. But when we played them in the group stage (Pashayev) didn't play - he was their secret to use against us!"

However, he was not too disheartened by the defeat, admitting that it was a nice feeling playing at home, and promising that they would return to fight in the next competition (in 2008), hinting that they might be stronger.

"I was very happy to be able to play in front of our own fans, there were 1500 people at the final.

"Next time we will be in the final again but I do not know if we will win.

Also we are competing in the EuroBasket (Division B) this year so that might affect things."