By Stefan Djordjevic / sdjordjevic@eurohoops.net
Marius Grigonis took the lead as he paced Zalgiris Kaunas to an 85-75 home win over LDLC ASVEL in Round 27 of the Turkish Airlines EuroLeague.
Griognis scored 21 points on 8-12 shooting Joffrey Lauvergne added 18 and Thomas Walkup 12 points. Rokas Jokubaitis had ten.
The top scorer of the night was quite strict with himself and noted that he wasn’t happy with his defensive performance and had a lot of help on offense.
“We’re trying to always have better energy than our opponents, and in one moment we had way better energy, when Loukas [Lekavicius] scored 6 points in a row. That was the key moment and I’m very happy for this really, really important win. About my [own defense], I’m not happy at all, but the team stepped up big-time, and there were a few quarters that we played really, really good defense,” Grigonis said.
Guerschon Yabusele scored 17 in addition to Norris Cole’s 14 and David Lighty’s 12 points. Ismael Bako helped with ten points.
Cole and Grigonis went at it early on and ASVEL was actually ahead 25-18 but Zalgiris wasn’t allowing them to make a more significant gap. The Lithuanians stayed close and with a 14-2 run to end the third quarter (67-57) took over the game.
The guests put on a comeback effort with Yabusele stepping up to the occasion but they couldn’t make any major progress as Zalgiris always seemed to find the right answer offensively.
The defense was on point at important times and coach Martin Schiller praised his squad’s effort with a short analysis.
“Congratulations to our guys for winning the game. The key for the win, to me, was the defensive end. We had 21 deflections, so we were very active. We stole the basketball 8 times. That’s not necessarily indicative of good defense, but it did show our activity. Our pressure on the basketball in full court was very good and helped us. The second defensive key was our post-up defense on [Moustapha Fall]. Our bigs did a good job there, staying between him and the rim and not letting him catch the ball over the top. Last but not least, controlling Will Howard was important for us. He’s been so hot in the last couple of games that we had to put a very good and big emphasis on that, and the guys did a good job, so we are very happy about the win.”