By Eurohoops team/ info@eurohoops.net
KIROLBET Baskonia logged a 71-56 home win over Crvena Zvezda mts and caught up to them at the Turkish Airlines EuroLeague standings. Both teams now hold a 10-16 record.
Tornike Shengelia led the winning side with 18 while Shavon Shields scored 15 and Michael Eric ten points. Ilmane Diop added eight.
Shengelia, Shields and Eric combined for 28 points for Baskonia in the first half and it was enough to give the Spaniards an 11-point lead in a not-so-efficient first half (39-28). Zvezda had far more trouble scoring and Kevin Punter’s ten points seemed to be the only thing keeping them alive early on.
Much room for improvement
Despite keeping Zvezda to just 28 points in the first half, Baskonia coach Dusko Ivanovic wasn’t completely satisfied with his squad’s defense: “At the start of the game, we tried to play seriously in defense and offense. In the first half, we had problems defending one-on-one plays. We’ve improved transitional play but there’s still a lot left to do to improve.”
Lorenzo Brown showed some signs of waking up after the break as Zvezda cut the gap to five points (44-39) but the guests just didn’t have a consistent solution offensively, taking a lot of contested shots with the clock running down.
Baskonia – aside from a strong defensive effort to force tough shots – used that to their advantage, staying aggressive and quickly increasing the lead back to 11 points (54-43) by the end of the third quarter, and left nothing to chance in the final ten minutes.
Shengelia pointed out to his teammates’ aggressiveness and that they will keep fighting for a playoff spot: “Everybody stepped up tonight on defense and aggressiveness. We were more aggressive on both sides of the court, especially on defense. I think we did a good job in rebounds in the second half and we have to keep going like this. Our mindset is that we are still alive. We still can make it to the playoffs and hopefully, we are going to do it. We will do whatever that depends on us: play games and try to win them, and then we will see.”
It should be noted that the Serbian team didn’t have coach Dragan Sakota at the bench as he stayed in Belgrade due to certain health problems and Andrija Gavrilovic replaced him for this clash.
Punter added two more points in the second half to finish with 12 while Brown finished with ten as well and Vladimir Stimac with 13 points.
“The 56 points are obviously showing that we didn’t find a way to punish their defense, to finish our offense with higher percentage shots,” Gavrilovic noted. He also answered negatively to whether he was in any contact with Sakota during the match and didn’t have a set opinion on whether his absence affected the outcome.