Constanta, Romania, February 13, 2014. Thursday night was magical for Tomis CONSTANTA as Romania’s champions, for the third time in the history of the club from the Black Sea coast, qualified for the semifinals in the European Cups.  After excelling in the Challenge Cup back in 2009 and 2012, Tomis secured its spot among the four best teams of the 2014 CEV Volleyball Cup - Men by cruising to another victory over Turkey’s Maliye Milli Piyango ANKARA.  After an away 3:1 win in the first leg of the Challenge Round, today the Romanian team delighted the home fans with a 3:0 (25-23, 25-21, 29-27) shutout.

Without setter Dejan Vincic, injured in the first set played last week in Ankara, the Turkish team was unable to stop Tomis.  Maliye Milli Piyango’s good blocking efforts in the first set only helped the team snatch the lead for a few moments before the second technical time-out.  The rest of the time head coach Martin Stoev’s players dominated the set with their more efficient spiking. After 24-21 they failed to convert a couple of set points, but still managed to claim the set at 25-23.

The second set stayed level through 5-5. The home guys continued to play much better in offense which once again helped them take the lead and maintain it through 25-21 in the end.

Having already secured qualification, the Romanians did not take a step back.in the third set.  Playing on with the same starting seven players, Tomis rushed to an 8-3 lead after scoring 5 consecutive points.  As both teams pushed harder on the serve, they also started making more unforced errors.  Gradually, Maliye managed to come back and equalize at 18-18 to prompt a more exciting ending of the set. But led by their captain and setter Andrey Zhekov, the boys from Constanta had no intention of postponing the after-party and persevered to win it by 29-27.

While Nikola Gjorgiev topped the scorers’ chart of the match with 20 points for the Turkish squad, Dmitrii Bahov contributed 17 points to his team’s victory.

“It was a very important game for us and I am so happy for the victory. It is great to play in the semifinals. It is the most significant international result for Tomis”, declared coach Martin Stoev.

“Tomis is a very good team, with very good players. It was hard to beat team. We had problems with our injured players”, says Josko Milenkoski, coach of Milli Piyango.