By Eurohoops team / info@eurohoops.net
Mike James paced AS Monaco’s return to EuroLeague action Thursday, leading his team to an 83-78 victory against FC Bayern Munich on the road for Round 21. Monaco hasn’t played a game in the competition since December 29, a victory over Maccabi Tel Aviv.
James called the shots in crunch time and poured 26 points on 5-of-7 from behind the arc, along with 6 assists and 4 rebounds, to help Monaco register its second consecutive win, and their second one against Bayern this season, to improve to an 8-11 record in the standings.
“It’s been a long time since we played a real EuroLeague game”, said James after the win. “Just happy to be back. Happy we won. On to the next one. Just settling down. We hadn’t played a EuroLeague game in a real long time so we were all kind of getting winded, so we were making little errors and not running our plays all the way right. I think once we got into our plays and started sharing the ball, it worked out for us.”
Danilo Andjusic was also among the top contributors for Sasa Obradovic’s squad with 16 points, Dwayne Bacon posted 11 points and Donatas Motiejunas had 10.
Corey Walden registered a new career-high with 26 points (5-of-10 threes) and 5 rebounds for Bayern, though the team ran out of fuel late in the fourth quarter, allowing Monaco to hold on to a slight edge in the final three minutes.
Vladimir Lucic added up to Bayern’s efforts with 14 points, while Deshaun Thomas picked up 9 points and 5 rebounds. Bayern now shares an 8-11 record with their visitors.
Photo: EuroLeague