By Eurohoops team / info@eurohoops.net
Three weeks ago Fenerbahce was sitting at 3-9 in EuroLeague after suffering multiple losing streaks that had pushed the Turkish side way below the playoff spots in the standings.
Now, they are on the rise again. Nando De Colo was everywhere with 17 points, seven assists and a career-high six steals as Fenerbahce grabbed its fourth straight win by defeating Baskonia 75 – 53.
“t’s a great feeling because, like I’ve already said, we are working hard every day to come back where we should be from the beginning,” De Colo said. “It takes time, but we are here and tonight is another great win. I think we did a great job tonight to be together defensively. We never gave up on any play and this gave us a lot of confidence on offense.”
Achille Polonara had 15 points and Jan Vesely posted 13 points plus five rebounds to compile a power trio – together with De Colo – that did most of the hard work on offense. Because the whole Fener squad defended impeccably to force Baskonia to tie the fourth-lowest scoring output in the club’s EuroLeague history.
Only Steven Enoch (14 points, eight rebounds) scored in double figures and basically stood out for Baskonia that completed the Istanbul trip during the double-game EuroLeague week with back-to-back losses. Neven Spahija’s team is 5-11 with one match left in the first leg of the regular season and must hope for a major turnaround to get its playoff hopes up.
Fener led for the entire game and was up by double-digit numbers in all of the second half after closing the break up 43 – 28. Baskonia had become momentarily competitive in the first period to turn a 17 – 3 deficit to 19 – 14 but then suffered a 10 – 1 run and never became threatening in the rest of the match.
“I give credit to Fenerbahce’s defense, but also on the other side, we didn’t do anything offensively,” Baskonia coach Neven Spahija said. “We have to play better offense if we want to compete in the EuroLeague. I think Fener played way better basketball, but we didn’t even show up.”
All in the hustle
Fenerbahce’s intense effort made coach Sasha Djordjevic quite proud as he admitted after the game.
“Today we were executing defensively really well,” Djordjevic said. “Everybody who was there was focused and it doesn’t always happen, but this was really a defensive effort. It’s a team game, we have some bad things out of this game, some we don’t know what’s going to be with Booker (injury) and Duverioglu twisted his ankle this morning, but the guys are fighting like crazy… This is a team. I am very proud.”