«Vahakni City - BC Dvin»

“Vahakni City” players got easy win in the first game of the final against “BC Dvin” with a score of 106:93.

At the start of the match it felt like the first game would be equal because teams just got to this stage of the play-offs and coaches would try to find opponent’s advantages and disadvantages. Also players and coaches had enough time before finals to analyze opponent’s tactics but anyway it’s much easier to understand how the opponent plays and to try to use prepared tactics against them and see what works and what doesn’t. According to my expectations the game should’ve went like that but everything turned out differently.

Beginning of the game

Right at the beginning of the game Jordan Watson (Dvin) scored 3 points for his team. After that Alvin Brown (Vahakni) got 2 in the paint, but it looked like Dvin is set to win the game and has started the game more seriously than Vahakni because they weren’t scared to shoot right from the first seconds from difficult positions and Dvin players did it pretty good. But Dvins players happiness ended soon as Alvin Brown started getting points for Vahakni. Vahakni taking control of the game after Brown’s dunks wasn’t coincidence most likely those dunks gave the players confidence. On 5th minute 38 second Vahakni got the lead for the first time in the game thanks to Alvin Brown.

Last time when Dvin weren’t loosing in this game the score was 12:12, after that Vahakni’s advantage increased, 8 minutes into the first quarter the score was 31:19 but after it looked like Dvin is slowly getting back in game they even could reduce the backlog to 2 points, it happened 15 seconds before the end of the first quarter. Joshua Singleton (Dvin) played very well on opponents half court he dribbled past 2 opponents and assisted to the free rim to Mark Hall:

First Quarter ended with the score of 35:31 in favor of Vahakni. I should note that both teams didn’t make a single substitution, just at the beginning of the second quarter Dvin’s Coach Tigran Gyokchyan substituted Artyom Bichakhchyan to Varanta Keledjian.

Nothing interesting happened in the second quarter. Vahakni was increasing their advantage and Dvin couldn’t oppose anything. They just couldn’t start playing their game. In the second quarter quarter Singleton (Dvin) made a three-point but unsuccessful, after that shot the Dvin’s players couldn’t bring their attack to a completion, or even a throw for a whole minute. I think after that Dvin’s chances to win the game went down considering the score on the scoreboard. Later when Tigran Gyokchyan (Dvin) realized that everything was pretty bad, he requested a time-out after which he gave Jordan Watson a lil rest, releasing Demetrius Levarity on the court.

Probably the most significant event of the second half could have been Vahakni’s, first substitute but it didn’t happen. Their first substitution happened only after 24 minutes and 34 seconds after the start of the game and that is very late. While Vahakni City substituted only 1 player Dvin managed to make 9 substitution. If we’ll count the total amount of time Vahakni bench players spent on the court you’ll get only 4 minutes and 52 seconds and that’s extremely low. In Vahakni’s squad 3 players played the whole game without getting subbed off, they played all 40 minutes nonstop. Teams like this usually have lot of injured players but to their great happiness they avoid them.

End of the game

The fourth quarter started with the score 82:64 in favor of Vahakni. It was already obvious who’s gonna be the winner tonight, Vahakni players were playing just for fun the whole quarter and Dvin tried to show what they’re capable of but even against players who are just having fun they didn’t succeed much because they no longer had motivation at all and was pretty clear.

The match ended with the score 106:93 in favor of Vahakni City.

Like I already said it looked like Vahakni players didn’t face anything serious in this game, even tho Vahakni’s leaders like Albert Tatevosyan who didn’t really affect the game and scored only 8 points Vahakni still got the win. By the way if Dvin manages to win at least 1 game the series will be delayed to 4 matches and considering that Vahakni City plays almost without substitution Dvin’s chances of winning the final will increase. Let’s hope Dvin will prepare for the next game better and will show what they actually can do on the court but in the meantime Vahakni has more desire and motivation for the championship.