Between upset & flop: Martin Ivanov of Lietkabelis "The-One-Point-Man"

Martin Ivanov, the gamer of Lietkabelis within his second season overall at the highest stages in European 1v1 2K24 basketball in Europe, entered this season as the MIG - Most Improved Gamer.

Started the season of well, but kind of seems that he is playing versing top tier gamers: leading 3 1/2 quarters vs Viktor Vladov/Unicaja Malaga (15-1) at this point and gifting the first loss to Gevi Napoli, controlled by Alessandro Cerè (9-1).

But yesterday Martin showed one of his "off-days" as he struggled and lossed to JL Bourg/Florian Albat, bringing him "back to life and hope" in the EuroCup Group B standings. Although Florian and Bourg lossed versing Unicaja Malaga just couple hours before that, and had to overcome a devastating blow-out loss by 63 point differential.

So how is this even possible?

When Martin Ivanov stays concentrated and brings up his A-game, he can be a menace and threat to almost everyone in the EuroCup and is a serious candidate to reach into the PlayOffs for the second consecutive season.

But when he has those "off-days" more often than not, he could find himself out of reach of playoff spots this season, which is more dangerous then ever, as 9th to 13th placed of both groups have to play tuff playdowns to stay in EuroCup also in the next season.

Having that in mind, it is really hard to predict Lietkabelis' games, as Martin also used to shoot from behind the arc a lot, which also makes him unconsistent and unpredictable as he depends on his shooting from wide range too much.

After the loss to Bourg, Martin Ivanov has to shake off frustration to meet Dubai (16th place of the 18 places EuroCup Group B). Once again he started off slow and ran after a deficit the whole game till the buzzer. The highest deficit during the game has been even 19 points.

With less than 1.5 second left after a timeout taken, he managed to free up Gediminas Orelik for a spot up corner 3 for the win, to overcome Dubai by only 1 point for the second time this season.

So he won both clashes by 1 point versus this opponent as well as he did versing Trento couple days ago, as Trento missed the buzzer beater.

"I can't handle it mentally right now", was Trento gamers comment after the game.

This earned Martin Ivanov a new nickname "The-One-Point-Man".