Frightening favorites ratiopharm Ulm has taken the final step in its sensational run and won the basketball championship for the first time in the club’s history.
New coach Anton Gavel’s team won the fourth final game of the Bundesliga playoffs on Friday evening against Telekom Baskets Bonn 74:70 (43:41) and won the best-of-five series 3:1.
Ulm, runners-up in 1998, 2012 and 2016, ended an incredible run with the title. The seventh in the main round had eliminated first champion ALBA Berlin (3:1) and then cup winner Bayern Munich (3:0) in the playoffs.
Gavel, a former German international, made a big splash in his first year. Ulm, who started the season with a series of four bankruptcies, made history. Never before has a seventh-place team won the title, never knocked out the top three.
Bonn meanwhile have to wait for their first league title after a remarkable first round, which the club finished in first place with only two defeats. For the sixth time, the Telekom Baskets lost out in the final. After all, Bonn won the first trophy in the club’s history in the Champions League in mid-May.
Ulm begins highly concentrated
“We have to try to hide everything. There is so much at stake, but we have to concentrate on playing our game,” warned Ulm’s national player Karim Jallow before the first match point at “MagentaSport”. It’s about the right focus, “quarter by quarter”.
Ulm started concentrated and started strong. But the people of Bonn held back. Both teams played at an enormous pace, the lead kept changing back and forth. The picture only changed in the middle of the second quarter, led by Yago dos Santos, the hosts were able to pull away with an 11:0 run (38:27/15th minute).
Great atmosphere in the hall
The fans cheered their “Uuulmer” on loudly, as in the overwhelming victory on Wednesday (112:84), the people of Bonn seemed unimpressed. The Champions League winners came back 10-0 before the break and fought hard for a chance of a decider on their own turf.
“It’s a pity that we couldn’t keep the lead. Now it’s tight again,” said Ulm’s sporting director Thorsten Leibenath. The missed chance took revenge, Bonn came out of the dressing room better and pulled away (57:49/28th). But the momentum tipped again: Ulm stopped the opponent in the final quarter with a strong defense, pulled away with a 18:0 run (69:59/36.) and brought the lead home in the exciting final minutes.
Ulm stole game one in Bonn and, after equalizing to make it 1-1, made everything clear with the home advantage in duels number three and four.
The top scorer of the hosts in the decisive third win was the brilliant dos Santos with 25 points.