By Eurohoops team/ info@eurohoops.net
Cory Higgins set the tone early by scoring 13 out of his game-high 22 points in the first quarter and Barcelona led from nearly start to finish to ultimately crush Fenerbahce Beko 89 – 63 at home.
Barcelona bounced back to wins after falling to archrival Real Madrid last week and improved to 7 – 2. This was the seventh loss for Fenerbahce that is off to its worst start in the club’s EuroLeague history.
“It was a good win for us, a great bounce-back win after our poor performance last week. It is just the beginning of a huge week for us; we just have to keep this momentum going,” Higgins said to EuroLeague TV.”It was good – again, it was a poor performance by me last week, so it was a good bounce back and more importantly, we played well and as a team.”
Alex Abrines (season-high 12 points), Kyle Kuric (11 points, seven rebounds), Adam Hanga (10 points) and Brandon Davies (10 points, five boards) also scored in double figures in a match that Barcelona turned into a blowout. The “Blaugrana” began by taking a 25 – 15 lead in the first period and proceeded to dominate all aspects of the game to retain a more than safe advantage.
The Nando De Col0-less Fener was unable to catch up following that first period, failing to connect to the basket even from the free-throw line (a historic low 2/10).
The time-out
By the end of the third quarter, the Turkish side fell behind 67 – 40 and coach Zeljko Obradovic didn’t like at all how his team performed, particularly on defense. The end result was a time-out much different than the one in which Zoc “erupted” last week.
Joffrey Lauvergne (12 points) was the only Fener player to score in double digits. Melih Mahmutoglu and Ahmet Duverioglu added eight points apiece.
Zoc used youngster Tarik Biberovic as a starter and also sent 18-year-old Ekrem Sankacli in the game for six minutes of the last period.
A perfect game
Barcelona head coach Svetislav Pesic like the consistency his players showed to return to victories.
“We played a perfect game, this is true,” Pesic said. “The most important, I think, was that we didn’t have ups and downs during the game. We had continuation, especially on defense, improving in the third quarter, which is sometimes for me a new game. We played excellent in the low post; they looked for the low post, but we denied it, eliminating any inside game. In general, it was a perfect game, especially on defense. If you play good defense and control the rebounds like we did tonight, we build confidence for our offense.”