By Eurohoops team / info@eurohoops.net
Six players scored in double figures for Anadolu Efes that dominated the game against CSKA Moscow from start to finish and ended up capturing a 100 – 70 payback win. CSKA, that had won the regular season’s first-leg game 100 – 65, suffered its biggest loss in the modern (post-2000) EuroLeague era.
Vasilije Micic led an overall balanced and superlative offensive effort from Efes with 21 points, eight assists and six rebounds as his team registered its sixth win in a row. After his career-night vs. Valencia, Sertac Sanli contributed 14 points, Chris Singleton added 12 points while Rodrigue Beaubois, Shane Larkin and Krunoslav Simon had 11 points apiece. The latter also broke the 2000-point mark in his EuroLeague career.
“We knew what happened in Moscow,” Micic said. “We learned a lot from that game. In my opinion, they are one of the best teams in the EuroLeague with such a talented team. But at the same time, today we showed our great potential – defensively and offensively. When we step on the court and show our aggressiveness on defense, we send a message to the opponent
Only Tornike Shengelia (14 points) and Johannes Voigtmann (10 points) finished in double-digit numbers for CSKA Moscow. The Army Men were coming off two straight wins on the road (vs. Olympiacos Piraeus and Maccabi Tel Aviv) but were overwhelmed by their opponents’ aggressiveness on both ends right from the start and found themselves trailing 31 – 13 at the end of the first period.
The players of Efes didn’t take their feet of the gas and increased their lead to even beyond 30 points. They ultimately completed the night shooting 23-31 on their 2-point attempts and posting 23 assists.
A hard lesson
CSKA hit rock bottom, deficit-wise, since the team had never beaten by 30 before this century in EuroLeague. Coach Dimitris Itoudis believes that this kind of loss can teach something to his players ahead of the playoffs.
“Congratulations to Efes. They were the much better team, they deserved to win,” Itoudis said. “We competed a little in the second half. Obviously, it was not enough. It was obvious that they wanted to get back at us and revenge the 35-point loss from Moscow. At least we were able to not give up that margin – if that is something. As a leader, I am taking all of the responsibility for this game. We will only get better from it. To see it more calmly, from three road games we were able to get two wins. It’s not the way to lose, definitely. It’s actually the biggest margin of loss since I have taken over the great club of CSKA. But like I said, this will motivate us even more and will give us an extra reason why we have to become better each and every day.”
Photo: EuroLeague Basketball