By Eurohoops team/ info@eurohoops.net
Real Madrid scored 51 points in the second half to come back from down 16 against Olympiacos Piraeus and take a 75 – 67 victory at home. Thanks to this result, the top-placed Real extend its winning streak to 8-0 and improved its record to 18-3.
It was a tough and quite heated battle after halftime and especially down the stretch. With the score tied at 65 and two minutes to play, Thomas Heurtel and Edy Tavares combined for the latter to finish with a dunk after the alley-oop. On the other end, Thomas Walkup air-balled an open 3-pointer but Rudy Fernandez nailed his own and Real went up 70 – 65.
Olympiacos couldn’t respond while Sergio Llull delivered the icing – and the dagger – with one of his classic mandarinas that put Real ahead 73 – 65 and sealed the outcome.
Heurtel led all scorers with a season-high 20 points, dropping 11 of them in the third period to spearhead the turnaround of Real. Tavares produced 11 points plus nine rebounds and Guerschon Yabusele had 11 points (eight of them after the break) plus nine boards of his own.
“As I said after the first half, we played better defense in the second half and made shots. So we played with a good mentality,” Heurtel said. “I think that tonight we showed our character and it is a good win for us in front of our fans. The schedule is tough, we are going to play against Zenit in two days, against a great team, so we are going to try to prepare the game well and get a victory like tonight.”
Sasha Vezenkov finished with 16 points plus six rebounds, Tyler Dorsey scored 13 and Kostas Sloukas posted 12 points plus six assists for Olympiacos that dominated the first half 24 – 38. The Greek side saw its lead getting evaporated in the third period and then trailing for the first time after the start following a triple by Fabien Causeur for the 53 – 51.
The game remained close and the lead changed hands three more times until Real grabbed it for good in the last minutes. Olympiacos suffered its fourth straight loss and is now sixth in the standings, at 12 – 8.
“First of all, congratulations to the guys for a victory which we knew was going to be very difficult,” Real coach Pablo Laso said. His team played minus injured Adam Hanga, Jeff Taylor and Gabriel Deck. “I think we won two games today. We had to win first and then take the tie-break advantage, which we finally got in the last plays. About the game, maybe you think I am crazy, but I am going to say a very simple thing. We played well in the first half. Without energy, but we played well. In the second half, we played well and with energy and we looked like two different teams. It is easy to think that we missed shots in the first half and we didn’t have energy. In the second half, we saw a team with energy that didn’t play better than in the first half, but which was able to come back, find the rhythm of the game. I could criticize our first half and could be very proud of my guys’ work in the second half. I am keeping both. I am happy for the win. We are in this carousel of games which forces us to move on and start thinking on Friday’s game right away.”