BC Kyiv advanced into the Last 16 of the ULEB Cup after defeating Telindus 68:60.

The home side stared the game with a 9:4 run, but relaxed and allowed Telindus to reply with a surge of their own to grab an 18:13 lead at the end of quarter 1.

4 consecutive dunks from Viacheskav Kravtsov, Josh Davis and Artur Drozdov ignited Kyiv’s come back, while a three from Marcus Faison put his team up by 1 – 22:21.

Kyiv had a shaky 5-point lead at halftime, holding on to it midway through the 3rd quarter due red-hot Drozdov, who scored 9 points at the start of the 2nd half. Still, the Belgian side managed to hustle back and cut Kyiv’s lead to 1 at the end of the time frame.

The home side controlled the flow of the game in the final quarter, extending the gap and holding on to the win.

They now remain the only Ukrainian rep still playing in a European Cup and will next be tested by a Polish side Turov.

Tomo Mahoric: Me and my players are very happy that we won this game. You saw how difficult it is to play real playoff games: there’s a lot of tactics involved and it’s not so nice to watch them. Believe me all the other games are the same. Most important is that we advanced and we need to stay on this track and prepare optimally for the next round. Also I would like to say thank you to the fans that for the first time came in such a big crowd and lifted us in the final minutes.

Of course I would like us to score more points, but you can not. Ostende’s defense is very smart, they keep changing it and it is not easy to play aganst it. Plus there was additional pressure and you can not expect the shooters to shoot as well as usual.

Ryan Stack: Like coach said, I would like to thank the fans ‘cause they were very good tonight. A lot of them were there from previous games. It’s good to get a win against a team like this ‘cause they are a good team. We must stay focused and continue improving every day and just take it one game at a time.

Artur Drozdov: I agree with the coach, we are very glad we advanced. We knew it would be a hard game, we had no right to relax. When we couldn’t find our game the fans helped us and I would like to thank them for that. We just wanted to win more.

Sharon Drucker: First of all I want to congratulate the team from Kyiv. I think they did a good job and did their work, which allowed them to qualify. I think that these two games were a good fight between two good teams. We saw very intense defense from both sides. We fought, we believed and we thought we could do it. But we made some mistakes and lost some players and everybody who played played with heart.