By Eurohoops team/ info@eurohoops.net
Nate Wolters got a bouquet of flowers from Maccabi before the tip-off as his former team wanted to show some love. In the end, there was no love lost with Walters scoring 14 points as Crvena Zvezda stun the Israelis with the 75-63 win.
Wolters scored 17 points and finished the third quarter with two straight threes that gave Zvezda a 17-point advantage (54-37). While Maccabi tried to come back, there was no way of doing it with the host team having a tone of issues in the offensive end.
“This is his game in our team”, said Zvezda’s coach Dejan Radonjic about Wolters. Referring to his team’s injuries, which is still missing Aaron White, Branko Lazic, and Maik Zirbes, Radonjic added: “We had a tone of problems before the start of the season, we are still in the same situation, but we had a very good game defensively”.
As for White who suffered a broken arm in a prep game against Panathinaikos, Radonjic clarified that he will be out at least for two more months.
Thanks to defense, Zvezda started the game with a 10-0 run and led all the way, got even a 20-point difference (68-48) in the fourth period.
Nikola Kalinic, who was the top scorer of the winning side with 19 points, and Luka Mitrovic with a double-double (12 p. 11 r.) set the tone in defense for the Serbs. Scottie Wilbekin with 18 points and newcomer Mathias Lessort with 16 were the only players of Maccabi in double digits.
However, the hosts couldn’t get into striking distance with the exception of making it a five-point game (37-32) at the start of the second half.
“We had some moments when we lost some open shots and layups and we couldn’t change the momentum of the game, so it was a bad game for us and we have to learn from it”, admitted coach Giannis Sfairopoulos.
Photo credit: EuroLeague