{"id":344993,"date":"2023-08-25T14:25:50","date_gmt":"2023-08-25T12:25:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/?p=344993"},"modified":"2023-08-25T14:25:50","modified_gmt":"2023-08-25T12:25:50","slug":"near-perfect-vucevic-shines-in-montenegro-win-over-mexico","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/en\/near-perfect-vucevic-shines-in-montenegro-win-over-mexico\/","title":{"rendered":"Near perfect Vucevic shines in Montenegro win over Mexico"},"content":{"rendered":"

He missed the FIBA EuroBasket 2022, and was eager to get back into his favorite jersey. It showed, as Nikola Vucevic’s 27-point haul powered Montenegro towards a comfortable 91-71<\/a> win over Mexico.<\/p>\n

The game opened up proceedings in the Mall of Asia Arena, in front of 6,668 fans. They tried to help Mexico get back into the game, creating a lot of noise in the stands, but then gave Vucevic and Montenegro their well deserved ovations.<\/p>\n

Turning point:<\/b> With Vucevic’s dominance inside the arc and two made triples outside of the arc, Montenegro opened up a nine point lead at the break. Once he got help from Petar Popovic, who made back-to-back three-pointers in the third quarter, Montenegro raced away to a 16-point lead.<\/p>\n

Mexico tried everything, but Montenegro stayed calm, using their experience to keep their rivals at bay. There was no drama in the end and a rock-solid fourth quarter by Bosko Radovic’s men was enough to protect the lead.<\/p>\n

TCL Player of the Game:<\/b> Nikola Vucevic loves big stages, and the crowd in Manila were full of “oohs” and “ahhs” each time he scored. And he did it in variety of ways: rolls and dunks, left block post ups, right block post ups, spot up threes, trailing threes in transition – it was a prototype Vucevic game.<\/p>\n

He finished with 27 points on 11-of-15 shooting, with 8 rebounds, Montenegro were +26 with him on the floor, and he had a couple of big blocks to kill all hopes of a Mexican comeback. Honorable mention goes to Kendrick Perry’s 16 points and 7 assists.<\/p>\n

Stats don’t lie:<\/b> Before the event, we previewed this game as the battle of styles, of one team shooting a lot, and the other making shots inside the arc. That’s exactly what happened, but in reversed roles. Montenegro were the ones hitting threes, making 14-of-31, compared to Mexico’s 6-of-19 shooting from the same distance.<\/p>\n

Bottom line:<\/b> With Lithuania marked as the group favorites, and Egypt taking the role of the underdog, this could be the win that gets Montenegro over the line, towards the Second Round.<\/p>\n

Mexico will have to search for a win or two over Lithuania and Egypt to have a chance of escaping the group. Pako Cruz led them on the day with 16 points and 6 assists.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Bulls center notched a strong double double to give the Europeans a 91-71 win in Manila\u2019s Mall of Asia<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":158,"featured_media":344978,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_spbk_hide_featured":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[383],"tags":[],"rumors":[],"typology":[],"posizionamento":[],"class_list":["post-344993","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world-cup"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/5\/2023\/08\/DSC_4223.jpg","digistream_id":0,"digistream":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/344993","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/158"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=344993"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/344993\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/344978"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=344993"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=344993"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=344993"},{"taxonomy":"rumors","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rumors?post=344993"},{"taxonomy":"typology","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/typology?post=344993"},{"taxonomy":"posizionamento","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posizionamento?post=344993"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}