By Eurohoops Team/ info@eurohoops.net
The home-court advantage of the Turkish Airlines EuroLeague Playoffs best-of-five series returned to FC Barcelona after the 78-70 victory against Zenit Saint-Petersburg at Sibur Arena, Wednesday.
The undisputed series MVP, so far, Brandon Davies produced a game-high 22 points behind 9/14 field goals and also grabbed eight rebounds en route for yet another game-high 28 PIR. Kyle Kuric logged 13 points and Nikola Mirotic fired nine of his 11 points in the second half.
“Now the next step is to get recovered and ready for another difficult game,” pointed out Davies, “We are taking it one game at a time. Most important, as I said, is recovering after this game because it was a hard-fought battle.”
“As long as we execute properly, we always like our chances to win. We fought harder today and that’s why we came out with the win today,” said Cory Higgins after adding 16 points, including eight in the fourth quarter.
Nick Calathes registered seven points and six assists.
Barca in a 17-6 sprint created a short-lived double-digit distance late in the third period. The team coached by Sarunas Jasikevicius barely survived the Russian outlet attempting to jump back in front before a 19-8 run rebuild the double-digit cushion down the stretch.
“It was not perfect, we could have put the game away earlier,” noted the Lithuanian head coach, “But this is most important. These are the deciding moments of the season. Without suffering, we are not going anywhere.”
Billy Baron coming off 13 points through Game 1 and Game 2, scored a team-high 19 in Game 3. Alex Poythress was held to eight points in the two previous contests and bounced back with a 14-point effort. Those improvements fell short of keeping the home-court advantage away of playoffs top-seed Barca.
Will Thomas had a team-high 21 PIR off ten points, nine rebounds, and four assists. Kevin Pangos, coming off a couple of masterful performances, narrowly made a two-figure scoring outing with ten points, dished out six assists but committed six turnovers as well.
“Clearly, we lost because we did not control our defensive rebounds and turnovers in offense,” said Xavi Pascual, “For us, these were key. Of course, Barcelona has the quality, size, and amazing players. We have to continue. We can’t forget that we are facing the best team in Europe.”
Injuries sidelining Mateusz Ponitka and Arturas Gudaitis were confirmed damaging for the hosts in the latest installment of the series against an extremely deep team ranking first in the 34-game Regular Season.
The team guided by ex-Barca boss Xavi Pascual stole the home-court advantage in Game 1. Barca responded with an overtime victory and went on for the 2-1 lead. Game 4 is planned to be held Friday. A potential Zenit win will force Game 5 at Barcelona but a potential two-game sweep at Russia will send the Spanish giant to the Final Four.