By Eurohoops team/ info@eurohoops.net
EA7 Emporio Armani Milan led by 15 points (60-45) but when everything ended, after a stellar second half Partizan got the 82-69 win thanks to an amazing comeback.
The partial score in the last 14 minutes of the game was 37-9 and this is pretty much everything you need to know about the game.
Kevin Punter with 19 points led the charge, Zach LeDay added 15 crucial points and both didn’t hold back playing against their former team. Bruno Caboclo also had a great night with 16 points, while James Nunnally contributed 10 key points.
“We got some stops, first of all, we dig deep and we kept fighting, we didn’t look at the scoreboard, and the rest is history”, said Punter after the game.
“Simple things”
When asked what happened in the game, and how things turned around, Partizan coach Zeljko Obradovic said: “Simple things. The players believed and they trusted each other. Thanks to the amazing support of our fans the end of the third quarter and the fourth quarter was something amazing”.
And when asked if he was also himself a believer he answered with a smile: “Of course”.
For Milan, Shavon Shields with 19 points was the top scorer, and Maodo Lo added 12, but in the fourth period, Milan scored seven points, and nobody could make a bucket from the guests.
Partizan’s Alexa Avramovic played just five minutes, leaving the game after five minutes. Still, Partizan has now a 7-6 record, good enough for a tie at least in the 7th position, while Milan dropped to 4-9 still missing among other Nikola Mirotic to injury who is expected to be out “at least for some weeks, or even more” as coach Ettore Messina said in the press conference when asked on the issue.
“At some point, we run out of energy. When we had the energy, we played a fantastic game, but then it went off”, Messina commented adding also: “We need to recover our injured players and ensure that we are moving in the right direction”.
Milan’s coach explained with a great example the way his team lost the game: “Ironically, we are in the land of professor Aca Nikolic who used to say that we have to milk everything from the cow to fill the bucket and we are becoming masters in doing the opposite, spilling the milk. We played 26 great minutes and then we stopped”.