By Alex Molina / info@eurohoops.net
The last game of the year is always special.
And it’s hard to imagine a better way than finishing 2025 destroying Barça in Palau Blaugrana.
AS Monaco defeated the Catalan team 74-90 to jump to a 12-7 balance after defeating both Real Madrid and Barça in consecutive fashion.
Barça is now also 12-7 after dropping two games in a row.
Darío Brizuela was Barça’s top scorer with 25 points and Miles Norris (14 p.) also had some great minutes. But Barça missed Kevin Punter’s contribution: the blaugrana superstar only had 8 points after shooting 2/12 from the field.
Mike James scored 15 points to finish the game as the guests highest scrorer, but the MVP was Kevarrius Hayes thanks to his 14 points and 5 rebounds.
The first half was a complete show from the away team. Since the tip-off, Monaco dominated the tempo and the scoreboard.
Finishing the first quarter 13-22 was just the beggining, as the lead only grew as minutes passed.
Thanks to an amazing defense and being able to have great minutes from key players like Nikola Mirotic and Kevarius Hayes, Monaco finished the first half with 30-47 on the scoreboard.
Things didn’t change much after the break. Monaco was two steps ahead and not even Xavi Pascual’s ejection after two consecutive techs changed the state of the game.
Starting the fourth quarter 53-69 was a dream scenario for Spanoulis and his soldiers, that only had the mission to control Barça and had no real problem doing so.