By Eurohoops team/ info@eurohoops.net
Dzanan Musa scored a EuroLeague career-high 28 points and grabbed six rebounds as Real Madrid beat Valencia 80 – 73 on the road to capture its fourth straight win in the competition.
Musa produced the lot while only taking two free throws. He made 10-13 on 2-pointers and 2-5 triples while pitching in two assists and two steals.
“That’s really nice to hear,” Musa said when told of his career-high on EuroLeague TV. The Bosnian wing also made a key basket for the 78 – 71 with 25 seconds to play to more or less secure Real’s win after Valencia approached 71:74. “But the most important thing is the win. And I think we got it by team defense in the second half and especially at the end of the game. We stayed concentrated.”
Sam Van Rossom had 17 points, including 11 in the fourth period, and Bojan Dubljevic scored 15 for a Valencia team that was without leading scorer and passer Chris Jones (discomfort). After trailing by double figures for the larger part of the game and being down 16 in the third period, the Taronja managed to come back and make it 71 – 74 thanks to a triple by Van Rossom with 1:06 to play. Real responded with a 0-6 run to avoid any troubles.
“We started very good again,” Real coach Chus Mateo said. “Probably better than what we expected. We knew how dangerous they are. Especially their big guys opening the court like Dubljevic or Webb or even Rivero. They got a lot of talent and we won in a tough court. We are trying to find it [chemistry]. We are working every day and we’ll be making a mistake if we think we’ve already found our chemistry.”
Gabriel Deck contributed 16 points plus 10 rebounds and Petr Cornelie scored all of his 10 points in the first half. The latter and Musa were the main responsibles for Real being up 43 – 59 near the end of the third quarter before Valencia’s comeback efforts.
“It’s difficult to play against Real,” Valencia coach Alex Mumbru said. “We came back and we fought until the very last seconds. I’m happy that we fought like that. There were two, three details in the end like a shot that we didn’t took but we fought.”