By Eurohoops team/ info@eurohoops.net
In what was a close game from wire to wire, Fenerbahce BEKO got the 92-84 win over Zenit S. Petersburg moving closer to the playoffs. Nando De Colo with 24 points and Marko Guduric with 19 were the leaders of the winners who got the 14 wins, leaving Zenit to 13.
The guests entered the last quarter leading by five (74-69) after a 9-3 run, but Fenerbahce answered with their own 8-0 run (77-74) and never lost the lead again until the end.
As Guduric said: “It was not easy but we did a better job defensively in the second half and that made a difference. We just need to be careful, especially myself – I made two really stupid turnovers but I’m glad we won the game. We have to play this way and hopefully keep winning. Every game is precious and important in EuroLeague, especially here. We were able to protect our home court and that’s huge.”
Will Thomas scored 21 points for the losing side, however, he scored 13 of his points in the first period and couldn’t do much in the end as Fenerbahce got its ninth straight win and climbed to the sixth spot of the standings with a 14-10 record.
Jan Vesely added 16 points for the winning side, while KC Rivers scored 14 points and Billy Baron had 13 points for Zenit which dropped to a 13-9 record.
Fenerbahce coach Igor Kokoskov was ultimately happy with the way his team defended: “We keep saying we have to defend to run and we didn’t find those stops in the first half. A lot of mental mistakes, and we didn’t close the game well in crunch time. In critical times we were turning over the ball way too easily. We have to be smarter, we have to play hard and smart to close games like this. But credit to the players, they are competing and fighting, and we’ll take it. The only thing we care about is scoring one point more than the other team. Sometimes you can control the pace of the game, but we don’t care. We can play slow or fast, as long as we’re winning games we’re fine.”