By Eurohoops Team/ info@eurohoops.net
An impressive number of eight (!) players scored in double figures for Fenerbahce Beko as the Turkish side blew out ALBA Berlin 104 – 75 on the road in Turkish Airlines EuroLeague Regular Season Round 12 to improve to 10-2. ALBA lost for a ninth straight match and dropped to 3-9.
Carsen Edwards led the balanced Fener offense with 13 points and eight assists.
He had 10 of his points and six of his dimes at halftime when his team took a 35 – 54 lead and never looked back as more and more players entered the scoring equation.
Marko Guduric added 13 points plus six assists to Fener‘s win while Johnathan Motley had 11 points and six rebounds. Nick Calathes contributed 10 points, seven assists, and six rebounds, Tonye Jekiri posted 10 points plus 10 boards, and Nigel Hayes-Davis scored 10, as many as Devin Booker and Metecan Birsen.
“First of all it’s good to be back on the winning track, and personally it’s great to be back with the team,” mentioned Guduric on the win and recovering from illness, “We knew that coming here, ALBA is a great team, they play unselfish basketball but I think we did a good job. We were ready, we were aggressive, we made shots and we had eight guys in double digits, so I’m super happy, super proud of seeing this. Every time we play in Germany, whether it is in Berlin or Munich, it’s like a home game for us, so thanks a lot to the fans.”
“Congratulations to the team, congratulations to the players, we really bounced back from our last game,” noted Greek tactician Dimitris Itoudis referring to the Round 11 home loss to Real Madrid, “It was a completely different attitude, defensively, we were dominant on boards, we shared the ball great, 27 assists. The only thing that didn’t work well was the 22 turnovers. I think that if would have been able to limit that we could have finished with over 30 assists. But you cannot play perfectly and that was the element that we did not do that good.”
“We went in with huge respect for ALBA,” he added, “It’s a team that fights, plays aggressively, with athleticism, and a lot of ball movement, so we had to match those factors in order to stay in the game, and be able to compete. And I think we were the better team, outrebounded them, outplayed them. We had that moment that cost us a lot when they put a lot of pressure on our ball creators, they were double-teaming our pick-and-rolls and we turned the ball over often. At that moment they came within 3, but again, with the right alignment, the right spacing, we have read their way of defending, we had a little bit better spacing, and we hit big shots.”
“We just came in, respected them, played hard, we got to dive for loose balls, we got rebounds, and that’s the mentality coming in,” said Jekiri.
Jaleen Smith dropped 15 points for ALBA but his side trailed from start to finish. The hosts reacted after a 10 – 21 to cut their deficit to 21-24 but Fener responded strongly to once again take a double-digit advantage and never let it go for the rest of the match. Ben Lammers added 12 points and five steals to ALBA’s efforts while Maodo Lo scored 12 and Johannes Thiemman pitched in 10 points.
“We haven’t been at the level to compete in the EuroLeague,” confessed head coach Israel Gonzalez, “We did a lot of things wrong, we did a lot of things bad. We need to learn from these kinds of teams and try to improve and do better next time. Of course, we are not happy, we are very disappointed because we couldn’t play as we wanted, but this is how the situation is right now. We are in a really bad situation right now, with a lot of players sick, with some others feeling bad in the last days and unable to play with their usual energy.”
“Playing against the top-seeded team in the EuroLeague is of course not a must-win game, but we definitely sold ourselves short today,” described Thiemann, “Our rotation was weakened by the many absences due to illness, maybe that’s why we ran out of steam in the second half. Still, it’s unacceptable to lose by almost 30 points in a home game. We didn’t play physically enough and allowed too many easy points.”