As of: November 5th, 2025 9:33 p.m
Handball second division team HSG Nordhorn-Lingen narrowly missed a surprise in the round of 16 of the DHB Cup. The Lower Saxony team had to admit defeat to the bottom of the Bundesliga SC DHfK Leipzig with 27:28 (11:14) on Wednesday evening.
After the successes against third division team HC Eintracht Hildesheim and first division team HC Erlangen, HSG coach Mark Bult’s team was eliminated against the Saxons. Tarek Marschall was the best HSG thrower against Leipzig with seven goals. Adam Lönn was successful five times for the favorite.
The quarter-finals will be drawn on Thursday evening after the cup game between champions Füchse Berlin and ThSV Eisenach.
Nordhorn-Lingen after a good start with too many mistakes
With fast handball – once the great strength of the legendary HSG team around Jan Filip – the Bult team wanted to stress the Bundesliga club in front of 1,949 spectators in the Euregium. And also through compactness and robustness in defense, where the 2.03-meter giant Mika Sajenev in particular brought a lot of physicality to the game against his former club.
The start of the game was impressive for the outsider, even if not every throw found the target because former Kiel player Tomas Mrkva was equally good in the Leipzig goal.
After 20 minutes, U21 world champion Sajenev made it 8:8. The team from Grafschaft Bentheim had a lot of surprising things to offer on offense. Christian Wilhelm, for example, scored a great goal with a quick turn around his own axis and an immediate turn while falling, as did captain Björn Zintel with a Kempa trick on a pass from Maximilian Lux.
However, the second division team had some problems with their retreat behavior, and this was punished by the Saxons, who are the only team still without a win in the Bundesliga. The HSG went into the break at 11:14, also because shortly before the break Frieder Bandlow missed a seven-meter penalty and Wilhelm hit a free throw against the crossbar of the visitors’ goal.
HSG fights its way up and loses unluckily
After a temporary five-goal deficit, Nordhorn-Lingen came within 20:21 (47th) through Lux’s converted seven-meter penalty – everything was open again. And the HSG continued and equalized immediately afterwards through Bandlow. Goalkeeper Kristian van der Merwe was now a good support for the hosts with a save rate of 30 percent.
20 seconds before the end of the game, with the score at 27:28, the North Germans had it in their own hands to reach extra time with their own possession of the ball. But they couldn’t find the gap and were caught in a time game and lost the ball. That was tantamount to defeat.
