By Eurohoops team/ info@eurohoops.net
Fenerbahce Beko captured its second straight win of the 2020-2021 EuroLeague season by beating fellow Turkish powerhouse Anadolu Efes 80 – 71 on the road. Efes, last season’s standings leader, remains winless.
Nando De Colo scored 20 points and grabbed seven rebounds to pace the winning side while Lorenzo Brown added 17 points. Jan Vesely posted a double-double of 16 points plus 10 rebounds and Edgaras Ulanovas had 10 points and five boards.
Fener overall “killed” its opponent on the rebounds, collecting double the number (44 against 22) and making the most out of its 11 offensive boards with 18 second-chance points. This and their accurate 3-point shooting (9-17) made up for their 21 turnovers.
Krunoslav Simon dropped a game-high 24 points while dishing out five assists for Efes and Rodrigue Beaubois scored 11 on 2-8 shots. Ergin Ataman’s team, that was minus Shane Larkin, didn’t manage to efficiently connect to the basket and lost most battles inside the paint.
Fener made its major push down the stretch when with the score 62 – 63, they made a 2 – 11 run to take a 64 – 74 lead with three minutes left. Efes was unable to react sufficiently to cover that deficit.
“Both teams didn’t play good basketball, my team played terrible, but with the full-court press, we had a chance to recover and come back into the game,” Efes coach Ataman said. “But then again we made a lot of mistakes on offense, so it was a bad performance. Congratulations to Fenerbahce.”
Rebounding dominance
“Rebounding has been our Achilles heel since we started training camp,” Fener coach Kokoskov said. “It’s desire, energy and collective responsibility. We can’t rely on the big guys, we have to rebound with five people and one of the keys tonight was that we took care of the boards and rebounded the ball.”
Photo: EuroLeague Basketball