MUNICH (FIBA Europe Cup) - We look back at the Regular Season's penultimate week to underline some noteworthy figures and events that occurred during the action-packed Game Day 5 of the FIBA Europe Cup. 

A cruel deja vu
A loss is a loss but, in many ways, losing at the death hurts more than a 20-point blowout, so you can only imagine how hurt Kalev/Cramo and their fans must have felt on Tuesday night when they endured such a fate for the second time, at the hands of the same team.

Kalev/Cramo are now out of contention for a place in the Round of 32 but the way they suffered two of their five losses in Group H, both to Lukoil Academic Sofia, has made this fact that much harder to stomach.

The Estonian team were leading Academic by seven points midway through the fourth frame but threw away their final three possessions and, with the scores tied at 75 and 18 seconds left on the clock, the Bulgarian team called a time-out.

Once play resumed, Pavlin Ivanov ran down the clock outside the three-point arc and when there was just over three seconds remaining he fired off a shot.

As if to torture the hosts, the ball hit the glass, then circled the rim and finally dropped in with 1.6 second left, for Academic to win the game 78-75.

There must have been several among the stunned Kalev/Cramo fans who looked around in the gym to make sure they were not watching a remake of Groundhog Day.

Three weeks previous, in the reverse fixture in Sofia, the Estonian team were again leading for most of the fourth stanza but a triple right as the final buzzer was sounding off, only this time by Filip Videnov, gifted Academic an 80-78 win.

Academic currently stand at 3-2 and travel to Maccabi Rand Media next week with hopes of securing a berth in the Round of 32.

If it ends up to be a tight game, do not be surprised if you see Ivanov or Videnov hitting the game-winner right at the buzzer.

Stats of the week
Sodertalje Kings made the headlines on Wednesday night by defeating Belgian champions Telenet Oostende 71-54 in Group C action, a success based on feat much more remarkable than you might think.

Oostende's 54 points in this game made for their lowest offensive output in the last two years either in the Belgian Scooore! League, Eurocup, Euroleague qualifiers or of course, FIBA Europe Cup, since falling 73-51 to CEZ Nymburk in November 2013.

The Belgian side entered Wednesday's contest in Sweden averaging 83.3 points in the FIBA Europe Cup and a competition-high 91.2 points per game in the Scooore! League.

Oostende's offence has now dropped to 26th in the FIBA Europe Cup but the team that leads the competition in scoring, Tsmoki Minsk, did not miss a beat in Week 5 and taught opponents there is one golden rule to prevent them from scoring that much: Do not send them to the foul line.

Rilski Sportist did not follow it on Tuesday, so Minsk took 19 trips to the stripe and made 18 free throws to win the game 95-91.

Minsk lead the FIBA Europe Cup in scoring with an average offensive output of 92.4 points and 14 of those come from the free-throw line, on a competition second-best 88 percent.

While on the subject of scoring, we are all familiar with the axiom which sustains that defence wins games but this week in the FIBA Europe Cup we also learned that, in a way, defence also scores baskets.

Tajfun Sentjur went into their clash with Hibernia shooting only 38 percent from the floor and their accuracy did not improve much while in Ireland, as they went 30-of-75 (40 percent) on Wednesday night.

However, the Slovenian team came up with 18 steals, a new competition record and turned them into easy buckets to cruise to a comfortable 93-73 victory over Hibernia, who actually shot the ball a little bit better than their visitors (41 eprcent).

Performance of the week
Ivica Radic first let every single player have their say, saw some excellent individual performances registered during the first 22 games of Game Day 5 and then, in the very last game of the week on Wednesday night, he shattered them all.

The 25-year-old Croatian forward of Lisboa Benfica came up with a career-high 38 points in his team's 91-62 triumph over Sopron in Group B.

Radic did not even need to attempt a three-pointer as he hit 17-of-22 two-point shots and 4-of-4 free throws to reach this figure, which is also a new FIBA Europe Cup record.

The Benfica player also added nine rebounds, one assist and drew five fouls in his 37 minutes on the floor on Wednesday.

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