By Eurohoops Team/ info@eurohoops.net
Cazoo Baskonia Vitoria-Gasteiz improved to 5-4 in the Turkish Airlines EuroLeague and cut Zalgirs Kaunas’ three-game winning streak with a 93-73 victory in Fernando Buesa Arena.
With 19 points and seven rebounds for PIR of 25, Mat Costello led Joan Penarroya’s team.
Pierria Henry followed with 15 points, four rebounds, and four assists for PIR of 24, while Darius Thompson added 19 points and dished five assists. Vanja Marinkovic also played an important role with 14 points and 3/4 from beyond the arc.
“We just need to get together as a team and figure out the things we need to work on, and I think we did a good job today. Defense is the biggest thing we need to improve on because, as you see, we can score a lot of points, but if you don’t play defense in EuroLeague, there are not too many games you’ll win“, Thomspon said after another great performance.
Edgaras Ulanovas had 18 points for the losing side, while Keenan Evans added 17 points. Tomas Dimsa scored 11, and Ignas Brazdeikis 10 points.
“We are happy with the game. As we talked about at half-time, we had to improve our defense to repeat our performance against Monaco in the second part, and I’m proud because the players had a good situation, played with energy and fought for every ball with great effort, and played well in the defense. In offense, we didn’t have problems, we played together, shared the ball, found good options, and overall we played a good game“, coach Penarroya stated at the press conference after the win.
After a close battle in the first quarter, Zalgiris got things under control in the second period and went to the break with a two-point lead (44-42).
The guests were in front midway through the third quarter, but then the Spanish team turned the game around and grabbed a five-point advantage with seven straight points from Costello.
The team from Vitoria entered the last 10 minutes with a 64-58 lead and, with a 14-3 run in the final minutes, opened their way to a convincing victory.
“They were very much better today, especially in the second part. We stopped playing in the second half on both ends, and as I said before if you want to win against Baskonia, you need to play good defense. When we started losing, we stopped playing as a team, stopped sharing the ball, and started playing one-on-one, which cost us the win“, coach Kazys Maksvytis said after the game.