21.08.2012

Jagla Leads Germany To Road Win

Germany improved to 2-0 in Group B of the EuroBasket qualifiers as they topped Bulgaria 82-70 on the road.

Tibor Pleiß put on a good performacne for the Germans

Jan-Hendrik Jagla had 19 points and 10 rebounds to lead Germany to victory.

The visitors dominated the first half and, although Bulgaria tried to rally in the third quarter, they could not get close enough to worry Svetislav Pesic's troops.

Germany wasted little time in taking control of the game, and led 14-2 on Heiko Schaffartzik's three-point shot midway through the first quarter.

Another three from Schaffartzik made it 41-23 with 1:50 left in the second quarter with the result already appearing locked in.

Bulgaria did their best to change that, however, with a Cedric Simmons jump-shot and a Martin Durchev three making it 41-28 at half-time before Simmons' dunk brought the gap back to single figures to complete a 9-0 surge in the third quarter.

They got within eight, 49-41, on Aleksandr Georgiev's three midway through the third and the gap was 58-50 going into the final period until Lucca Staiger started it with a three.

Bulgaria were within eight once more, 72-64, midway through the period but got no closer as Germany eased home.

Per Gunther had 16 points for Germany, while Staiger and Schaffartzik had 12 points each, with Schaffartzik adding 10 assists.

Tibor Pleiß also reached double figures with 10 points and nine rebounds.

Simmons led Bulgaria with 21 points and nine boards, while Chavdar Kostov scored 11 and Bozhidar Avramov 10.

Bulgaria drop to 1-2 with the loss.

21.08.2012

Quotes Bulgaria vs. Germany

Tibor Pleiss, Germany:
"We had some problems in the second half. The Bulgarians, especially Simmons did a very good job - he took some rebounds, [made] shots. But in the end we played really well, we took some important rebounds and shots. We did a good job in defense."

Svetislav Pesic, head-coach of Germany:
"I congratulate my players for this very important win in Sofia. Bulgaria is a good experience for us, they have good experience in qualification games; this is the difference with the Azerbaijan team. My players don't have such experience. We played excellent in the first half - great defense.
We didn't play so good defense in the second half.  Kostov, Videnov are very good individual players and they and the others played a very good second half. We had two goals - to win this game, and the second is - to improve our play. Sweden is a good and motivated team. We must immediately improve our defense and play like we played in the first half in Sofia."

Philip Videnov, Bulgaria:
"We have problems with getting into the games. I hope we can fix this problem in the next games. We don't have real [power] forwards, our players on this position are small forwards indeed, but this helped today. We don't give up. We are in tough position now, our chances are smaller, but no game is the same with the previous one. It can happen that we win in Germany. We didn't have a chance in shooting today, and I hope we will have in the next games. We will fight."

Rosen Barchovski, head-coach of Bulgaria:
"We started the game bad. We were scared and our self-esteem was low after the loss in Baku. We made a lot of mistakes because of the pressing defense of Germany. We tried very hard to cut the gap. We played our best game till now in the group. We had some clear shots that we missed, some fouls we missed. Germany is really a serious and classy team. Our team deserves congratulations. Had we played this way in Baku, we could have won there. We will try to win all our next games."