Triumph's youth brigade do it again

Triumph's youngsters were leading from the front again on Friday night with Dmitry Kulagin and Sergey Karasev leading their side to a 76-69 victory over hosts Pieno Zvaigzdes.
Having scored a game-high 18 points on Thursday night, Karasev was backing it up an evening later, piling on 13 against Pieno Zvaigzdes on the back of three-for-four shooting from the beyond the perimeter. However the sharpshooter was standing in his teammate's shadow as Kulagin ran his team's offense from the point, scoring 19 points on eight-for-12 shooting from the field.
Not unlike an evening previous Triumph were sluggish through the opening exchanges, falling behind by nine points before coach Valdemaras Chomicius introduced his bench players to inject some go-forward into his team's offense. The ploy worked as the deficit was brought back to four by the end of the first quarter.
19-year-old guard Kulagin sprung to life in the second frame, turning the lead in Triumph's favor by going four-for-five from the field in the quarter on his way to scoring 10 points in a six-minute spree. Karasev was helping out his Russian U19 teammate, hitting a three to have the lead out to as much as eight points but on a Saulius Kulvietis three 12 seconds out from the half, the lead would be back to five at the half.
Kulvietis went on to finish with six points. Both teams struggled to make much count offensively following the break with the sides collectively hitting just eight shots from the field in the third quarter.
But not for the first time this season, Karasev showed himself to be the go-to man with time running out, sinking a three on the buzzer to have the Moscow club's lead out to 11 going into the final frame. However Roberts Stelmahers' team was not about to be put away easily and on a 10-2 run started by Eimantas Bendzius, Pieno Zvaigzdes had brought the deficit back to two with eight minutes still to play.
Bendzius ended the game with a game-high 20 points whilst Trevon Hughes and Paulius Morkielunas would both chip in with 11. But after their young teammates had done the hard work to put their team in the position they were in, Victor Zvarykin and Artem Kuzyakin stepped to the fore from the bench, scoring their team's final nine points to ease the gap back out to eight. Zvarykin finished with 10 points whilst Kuzyakin chipped in with 14.

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