Marincek and Benko shine in first Krim win

Larvik were in the lead for the first 39 minutes, but through an impressive comeback, RK Krim Mercator managed to win 24:22, for a great part thanks to great performances by Misa Marincek in goal and the right-handed right back Aneta Benko who scored three of Krim’s last five goals.

• Krim’s first points in the Women’s EHF Champions League this season
• Slovenian side finally win following their last four matches against Norwegians
• Larvik still looking for their first points of the season

GROUP D
 
RK Krim Mercator (SLO) vs Larvik (NOR) 24:22 (10:13)

Krim win after nail-biting finish

After an impressive comeback and a nail-biting finish, RK Krim Mercator managed to take their first Women’s EHF Champions League win of the season, while Larvik suffered their second defeat in two, but it was close as not until Krim’s Aneta Benko made it 24:22 with five seconds left was the match finally decided.

Larvik with the better start

Larvik had playmaker Anja Hammerseng-Edin back from injury, but were missing Sanna Solberg and Tine Stange, but still, the visitors got the far better start, leading 6:1 after eight minutes.

From that point, however, Larvik did not score for nine and a half minutes, and Krim made use of this goal drought to catch up at 6:6 in the 17th minute.

The rest of the first half was dominated by Larvik again and the visitors managed to go four goals up, ending on three-up at half-time.

Impressive Krim comeback

Larvik were leading until the 39th minute but when Krim equalised again (16:16), the course of the game changed.

After Benko gave the home team their first lead at 18:17 (43rd minute), Krim managed to stay in the driver’s seat, and through stellar performances, from Marincek who raised her saving percentage to 48, and from Benko, they managed to take the win.

Said after the match:

RK Krim Mercator player Aneta Benko:
“It was a hard match, but we held our tempo throughout and gave our maximum. We won due to the courage of our team, but we were also preparing for this match for the whole week, with this kind of performance [in the future] we will get more points.”

RK Krim Mercator Uros Bregar:
“After being the last team to qualify for our group, [maybe some people thought] wins weren’t expected, but this was hard-earned [today].

“We started badly and missed a lot of shots in attack but after 15 minutes we started playing better in offence and fast in attack.

“We have believed in our win; we believed that we can change the result [from half-time] and we did it.”

Larvik player Anja Hammerseng-Edin:
“We have to work on our game, get better and then we will start winning. The ball in our attack need to fly better and we need to be focused on each of our moves.”