By Eurohoops team / info@eurohoops.net
After three straight losses overall, including back-to-back defeats at home, Zalgiris Kaunas bounced back in fashion in front of its fans. Keenan Evans scored 20 points and grabbed five rebounds as Zalgiris beat Real Madrid 81 – 72 thanks to a very strong finish in the game.
With the score tied at 66 and five minutes remaining, Zalgiris made a decisive 8 – 0 run to go up 74 – 66. A key moment was when Edy Tavares was called with an offensive foul on Rolands Smits which was turned into an unsportsmanlike by the referees and Zalgiris used this opportunity to score four points in the same play to grab an eight-point advantage with 1:39 remaining.
Dzanan Musa, Real’s leading scorer with 22 points, made his team’s first basket in four minutes for the 76 – 69 but there wasn’t any time for the visiting side to come back.
“I feel great, we needed this win,” Zalgiris coach Kazys Maksvytis said. “I don’t want to speak about my individual performance, I am not concerned about that but most especially, we had the W. We needed it. We had a pretty bad stretch and I am just happy that we won. That was our mentality, to start from defense. Coached prepared a really good game plan and we were able to hold it. That’s most important, when you start aggressive, with a good mindset, then we are good.”
Edgaras Ulanovas contributed 19 points while Tyler Cavanaugh had 15 points plus five rebounds for Zalgiris. In a a mostly very close game, their team won despite shooting a very poor 33.3 percent on 2-pointers by finding second-chance points (16) or buckets (17 points) off the opponents’ turnovers.
“We didn’t let them score easy points, so I think this is really important,” Ulanovas said. “In this kind of game, sometimes you need to grab 50-50 balls, offensive rebounds, loose balls, which we did, and in the end, it was really important. I am happy for my team and we deserved to win tonight.”
Mario Hezonja added 17 points for Real. “We played a tight game until the end, until the last 4 minutes,” Real coach Chus Mateo. “We were tied and in the last moment, Zalgiris got more energy than us and beat us on all the 50-50 balls. They got some extra balls on the offensive rebounds, especially Butkevicius, that they converted into points at the end of the possessions, and that punished us a lot. This was something that we knew we had to do, to box out and keep the defensive rebound.”