By Eurohoops team / info@eurohoops.net
Vasilije Micic scored 15 out of his 21 points in the last quarter while making the winning free throws as Anadolu Efes downed Crvena Zvezda 84 – 83 to prevent a major upset at home in their last game of the first leg of the EuroLeague regular season.
“Many times I mentioned, I really don’t know what is the score in the game,” Micic said. “Maybe it is healthy sometimes to stay cool. I mean, we didn’t give up. They played a really, really good game. They actually had the best defense all season long, so far, and this is something we wanted to break somehow. We couldn’t break them easily, so we tried to push a little bit to break their momentum.”
Nikola Kalinic went 0-2 from the line before Micic’s decisive free throws. The Red Star forward had previously scored a tough mid-range jumper to put the Serbian team up 80 – 83 while finishing with 20 points plus five assists overall.
Tibor Pleiss scored a season-high 23 points and grabbed seven rebounds for Efes. The reigning champions had a fine entry in the game, taking a 28 – 16 lead before a major Zvezda comeback forced them to trail for the biggest part of the match. The visiting side successfully came back from that 12-point deficit thanks to a stunning second period (12-25) and went up 45 – 52, two minutes into the second half.
Efes tied the game at 68 early in the fourth quarter but the visiting team pulled away again and held the lead until the very last seconds and Micic’s free throws.
“Congratulations to Efes for the win,” Zvezda coach Dejan Radonjic said. “We were soft defensively in the beginning, making so many mistakes. After that, we played a really good game for 30 minutes. We had a big chance for the win but lost because we made some mistakes defensively and they won. We played a really good game but made the kind of mistakes that gave them free throws for the win. We are playing well offensively in the last week, not only today. Our three-point percentage has been much better in the last weeks, except the game against Barcelona.”
Thanks to this win, Efes climbed at 9 – 8. Zvezda dropped to 7-10.
Honesty
Efes Ergin Ataman had no problem to admit twice – first in the post-game flash interview and then in the presser – that luck was on his team’s side due to Kalinic‘s crucial missed free throws.
“We started the game excellent,” Ataman said. “After the first quarter, honestly, I believe that tonight, we had a chance to win our real basketball and to win the game easy, showing great basketball, but basketball is an interesting sport and in the second quarter, when we started to make a rotation and players came off the bench, great, experienced players like Micic, Simon, Bryant [Dunston], we lost our balance in the game, lost control of the game and Zvezda played excellent. They are a very good team, one of the best defensive teams in the EuroLeague. We knew about it but tonight, they also [played well] on offense. Everybody played great, especially Kalinic. He had a great game. Nate Wolters, Ivanovic, they found three-point shots in the pick-and-roll in the final seconds. Lazarevich is a young player and they never missed these open shots. And honestly, they deserved to win but some great effort by Micic in the last 2 minutes and our luck – Kalinic missed free throws in the final seconds – got us the victory tonight.”