By Eurohoops team / info@eurohoops.net
Buducnost ended the week at a tie with AS Monaco in the chase of a spot to the semifinals and big man Willie Reed has been named the 7DAYS EuroCup MVP of the week.
Per EuroCup:
In a thrilling opening week of the 7DAYS EuroCup Quarterfinals, Buducnost VOLI Podgorica center Willie Reed had a dominant performance leading his team to a rare Game 1 road win while earning himself a weekly MVP award in a process.
Reed posted personal bests of 24 points and 13 rebounds in 76-77 win over AS Monaco in Game 1 of their best-of-three series. Reed made 11 two-point shots, the most in the quarterfinals since 2014, on 17 attempts. He added 2 assists and 1 steal for a performance index rating 35, which is tied for the eighth highest PIR in quarterfinals history.
The next-best performance of the week belonged to Lokomotiv Kuban Krasnodar playmaker Nigel Williams-Goss, who had a PIR 34 in Game 1 loss against UNICS Kazan, collecting 31 points on 10-for-16 two-point shooting and 2-for-4 on three-pointers, along with 6 assists, 4 rebounds and 2 steals. Ferran Bassas of Joventut Badalona had a PIR 32 in a Game 2 loss against Virtus Segafredo Bologna, scoring 26 points along with 5 assists and 4 steals. Rounding out the list of this week’s top performers were Lokomotiv playmakers Mantas Kalnieits and, once again, Williams-Goss, who joined forces to lead Lokomotiv to an 86-74 win over UNICS in Game 2, forcing a series decider. Kalnietis had 23 points, 10 assists, 2 steals and 5 drawn fouls for a PIR of 29, while Williams-Goss collected 25 points, 4 assists, 4 steals and 2 rebounds for a PIR of 28.
Individual highs: Nigel Williams-Goss, Lokomotiv, 31 points
Williams-Goss’s 31 points in Game 1 led all scorers this week. Williams-Goss leads the quarterfinals in scoring with 28.0 points per game. Reed and Lokomotiv’s Kevin Hervey each pulled 13 rebounds in Game 1, the most this week. John Brown of UNICS is the top rebounder in the quarterfinals with 10.5 per game. Virtus point guard Milos Teodosic had 10 assists in Game 1, and Kalnietis matched it in Game 2, to lead all players in the opening week of the quarterfinals. Teodosic averages 8.0 assists, the most after two quarterfinal games. Alessandro Pajola of Virtus and UNICS’s Brown each had 5 steals in Game 1. Pajola tops the quarterfinals charts in steals with 4.0 on average. Buducnost forward Danilo Nikolic had 3 blocks in Game 2, more than any other player this week. He is one of four players averaging 1.5 blocks after two games, along with Hervey, Mathias Lessort of Monaco and Jordan Morgan of UNICS.
Photo: EuroCup