By Eurohoops team/ info@eurohoops.net
Maccabi Tel Aviv hit 16 3-pointers and routed Barcelona 104 – 80 on the road in the last game for the hosts for the 2021-22 EuroLeague regular season. The already first-seeded Barcelona will move to the playoffs with a 22 – 6 record while the Israeli side improved to 16 – 11 with one game remaining and may finish either fifth or sixth.
Scottie Wilbekin led Maccabi with 20 points on 5- 8 triples while James Nunnally contributed 18 points. Roman Sorkin scored 13, Derrick Williams dropped 12 points and Keenan Evans posted 11 points along with five assists for the Yellows that registered their fifth straight win.
“It’s a good time to be playing well, Wilbekin said. “We have one game before the playoffs and we want to continue getting better.”
Alex Abrines had 17 points and Nikola Mirotic scored 13 for Barcelona. There was a lot of rotation by the Blaugrana ahead of the ACB Clasico vs. Real Madrid with Sarunas Jasikevicius using only Abrines for more than 20 minutes and giving sufficient time to youngsters James Nnaji (eight points, three blocks in 14:18) and Michael Caicedo (two points in 16:58).
“We were locked in on defense, we got our offense going and that was it,” Nunnally said before talking about a shooting attack that happened in Tel Aviv Thursday (7/4). “There’s a terrorist attack in Tel Aviv. Maccabi, we are with you, Israel, we are with you. Stop the violence.”
While Maccabi led for the entire game after the initial five minutes, the whole picture of the match wasn’t accurately portrayed in the final score since the gap between the two sides opened widely in the fourth period. With the score 70 – 76 early in the fourth period, the visiting side went 10 – 2 to go up 72 – 86 and then closed the game with a 2 – 11 run to give blowout proportions to the margin.
“Not a very good game for us,” Jasikevicius said. “It doesn’t matter who is wearing this jersey, I think you have to compete more. It’s very clear that in three out of the four quarters we didn’t even get them to the bonus, like we talked at halftime. It shows our physicality which wasn’t physicality.”
“Some positives also,” Saras added. “There’s no question, we must be very happy that some juniors are playing. For them it’s a huge motivation for the future, even though they weren’t very good today.”
Position doesn’t matter
Maccabi coach Avi Even said that he and his guys look beyond where they will land in the standings when the regular season is over since the only thing that matters to them is to keep on performing strong.
“We had some good minutes on defense and I liked the way we shared the ball,” Even said. “We are thinking one game at a time. We aren’t thinking where we are going to finish.. sixth or fifth. The main thing for us is to be consistent and play basketball the best way.”