By Eurohoops team / info@eurohoops.net
Daryl Macon scored a 3-pointer with 0.5 seconds to play to give Panathinaikos Athens a 62 – 59 road win over Fenerbahce in the Greens’ last game for the 2021-22 EuroLeague.
Macon, who was 0 – 4 from beyond the arc before his game-winner, basically prevented a possible last-place finish for Panathinaikos since his team completed the regular season with a 9 – 19 record and at the 13th spot. The injury-plagued (Nando De Colo, Marko Guduric, Devin Booker) Fener is 10 – 17 with one match at playoff-bound Maccabi Tel Aviv left.
“This is a big win for us,” Macon said. He finished with 12 points plus five assists. “We need this, it’s going to give us confidence for Monday,” he added, referring to the upcoming Greek League derby vs. archrival Olympiacos Piraeus at home.
Ioannis Papapetrou had 21 points plus six assists and George Papagiannis posted 14 points plus 12 rebounds for Panathinaikos that was without guard Nemanja Nedovic and lost wing Howard Sant-Roos to injury five minutes into the game.
Jan Vesely led Fener with 20 points while Pierria Henry scored 16. After trailing for the almost the entire first 30 minutes, the hosts took the lead at the end of the third period and went up 51 – 44 early in the fourth quarter behind a 14 – 0 run.
Fener retained the lead until Papapetrou hit the go-ahead jumper for the 58 – 59 with a minute to play and then Vesely tied the score with a free throw. After Macon sent a bad pass to Papagiannis in an attempt for an alley-oop, Dyshawn Pierre didn’t manage to score close to the basket. On the other end, Panathinaikos found the winning shot thanks to Macon’s triple.
“It hurts,” Fener coach Sasha Djordjevic said. “But on our [bench] we had like 50 points in our [injured] starters [Marko] Guduric, [Nando] De Colo and [Devin Booker], and it’s hard to invent offensively something against a very physical team like Panathinaikos, who took advantage of their size. I don’t think we played smart enough at the finish. It would have been a great reward for all of our players to have won the game. We gave our heart out, but as I said, we didn’t finish it in a smart way.”
On to the Greek League
With the EuroLeague season over, Panathinaikos shifts its full focus to the Greek League. On Monday, there’s the game vs. Olympiacos that can decide which of the two powers will have homecourt advantage in their highly likely matchup in the Finals.
“It’s good that we finished with a win, and especially away for our home court,” Panathinaios coach Priftis said. “Congrats to the guys for today’s win. It was very special circumstances because, as you saw, we had no guards. Unfortunately, we are missing [Nemanja] Nedovic. [Howard] Sant-Roos, something happened in the first four or five minutes, so we had to play with a special lineup. So congrats to the guys, and we continue now with the domestic league.”