By Stefan Djordjevic / sdjordjevic@eurohoops.net
Zenit Saint Petersburg put on a valiant comeback effort but Barcelona managed to hold them off for an 85-81 home win in Round 22 of the Turkish Airlines EuroLeague.
Brandon Davies scored 18 points for the victors on 8-12 shooting including three straight crucial plays on both sides of the floor to stop Zenit’s comeback.
Davies was satisfied with how he’s been playing after being sidelined for a while: “I am feeling pretty good. The key for me is recovering after the game, but just that’s not just me, that’s everyone. Our staff did a really good job of getting me back in shape, so I just have to keep going, keep getting better every day.”
Kyle Kuric added 16 on just one miss from the field while Cory Higgins and Nikola Mirotic helped with 14 each. Nick Calathes put on an all-around performance with nine points, 12 assists and seven rebounds.
“Davies and Mirotic have understood that the team has good dynamics and don’t want that to be broken. Niko and Brandon had a very good return to the team and we followed the same direction, giving Cory and Nick a lot of responsibilities. They have integrated themselves into our team but of course, they are two very good players. They are aware they can be decisive and score a lot of points and play an important role, but they returned to the team with a very good, very correct mentality,” coach Sarunas Jasikevicius said.
For Zenit, Andrey Zubkov scored 15 points – all from deep (5-6) – as did Arturas Gudaitis while Kevin Pangos scored 13 in addition to Mateusz Ponitka and Billy Baron’s ten each.
Led by Kuric who was off to an almost perfect shooting night, Barcelona went ahead 44-33 at halftime and was up by 19 points (69-50) at the end of the third quarter.
Many would throw in the towel but not the Russian team. Zubkov banked in a couple of three-pointers as Zenit cut the gap to a six-point margin (74-68), however, Davies decided enough was enough and took matters into his own hands.
The American big made a putback under a foul off Higgins’ miss and scored the extra free throw. Additionally, he blocked Gudaitis on the other side of the court and then immediately scored again for his team to seal the deal.
Barca improved to 16-6 as they stay at the top of the standings while Zenit now holds a 13-7 record. Pangos banked in a buzzer-beating triple to make it a tie in a potential tiebreaker (Zenit won the first match 74-70).
Jasikevicius wasn’t happy with the final quarter and used it as a lesson: “For three quarters, we really played good basketball. It happens a lot in these situations, we relaxed and it was actually a dangerous situation at the end. I told my guys that probably we should take the first three quarters and the good basketball that we were playing, and being a veteran team, we cannot let this happen, what we did in the fourth quarter because it is very, very dangerous. In the end, we struggled a bit. We had a good lead, playing good basketball and honestly, in this situation and after so many games, we should have sealed the game earlier and didn’t do it.”