By Eurohoops team / info@eurohoops.net
Shavon Shields scored a EuroLeague career-high 26 points on near-perfect shooting as Olimpia Milano beat Khimki Moscow 102 – 93 in a postponed game for Round 8 of the EuroLeague regular season.
“It’s a big win. Great to win on the road after the game we dropped last week at home. We made big plays down the stretch,” Shields said after the game. He shot 6-6 2-pointers and 4-3 from beyond the arc, missing one single shot in the fourth period.
“I feel good. My teammates put me in good positions to make plays,” he added when asked about his performance. “Hats off to my teammates for making me look good.”
While Milano improved to 6-4 and bounced back after the home loss to Panathinaikos, Khimki’s fall continued. Rimas Kurtinaitis’ team dropped to a league-worst 2-9 after suffering its third straight loss despite Jonas Jerebko’s 20 points, Errick McCollum’s 18 points, and Alexey Shved’s career-high 13 assists (plus 13 points).
“We had a lot of problems tonight with our one-on-one defense,” Kurtinaitis said. “For sure any time we were late, they punished us with a really good percentage from threes. They controlled the game because we down from the beginning. We got back a couple of times really close, but then we had turnovers on offense and mistakes on defense and we lost the opportunity to win the game.”
With Zach LeDay scoring 18 points and Malcolm Delaney adding 16 points and seven assists, Milano’s fluid offense (a franchise EuroLeague all-time second-best 28 assists) made short work of Khimki’s ineffective defense, and the “Red Shoes” led from start to finish. After trailing by 10 with three minutes to play, the hosts cut their deficit to 88 – 93 with back-to-back 3-pointers by Jordan Mickey (17 points) but then a four-point play by Kevin Punter (15 points) halted their comeback effort.
A win against everything Khimki had to offer
Olimpia Milano coach Ettore Messina particularly enjoyed the victory since it arrived vs. a Khimki Moscow squad that had all its players available.
“First of all, it’s a great win because we won against a full squad for Khimki,” Messina said. “They now have all their players and will soon get back on track. So it’s an important victory. The second thing is I think we kept playing good offense throughout the whole game. But our defense in the fourth quarter helped us win the game and I am very happy. I’m so happy for the guys because they played really a great game.”