By Eurohoops team / info@eurohoops.net
Amine Noua hit the winning triple with less than a second remaining and ASVEL Villeurbanne beat Olympiacos Piraeus 77 – 75 at home after a comeback from down 21 points in the second half. It was a triumph for the French side and an ideal occasion for superstar Nando De Colo to celebrate his entrance into the 4,000-point club in EuroLeague.
“Man, I mean, crazy feelings,” Noua said. “It is like a dream. We were 20, fought and came back and at the end, it is all about basketball. Great pass by Nando, they went two on him and he kicked it to me.”
Noua and De Colo scored 13 points apiece while Jonah Matthews dropped 14 points each, as many as Charles Kahudi who also grabbed five rebounds in the third straight victory for ASVEL that arrived in a thrilling fashion.
Giannoulis Larentzakis had scored the go-ahead layup in transition for the 74 – 76 with 30 seconds to play. ASVEL had previously taken its first lead in the match with free throws by De Colo, to complete a turnaround after trailing 33 – 54 four minutes into the third quarter.
De Colo then played a big part in the winning play for ASVEL. When Olympiacos doubled-team on the French superstar he sent the ball to a wide-open Noua who drained the basket that decided the outcome.
“[4,000 points] is a great achievement but it is more than scoring points,” De Colo said on his record. “Like I say, I just try to do the best for the team and tonight, with the victory, it is even better.”
ASVEL’s victory gets even greater, considering the fact that Olympiacos traveled to Lyon after two straight wins with an average margin of 36.5 points (vs. Virtus Bologna and Fenerbahce Beko) while scoring 10.5. points. In a manner similar to other road games, Giorgos Bartzokas’ players collapsed in the fourth period when their opponents overpowered them 27 – 14.
Sasha Vezenkov led Olympiacos with 16 points while Isaiah Canaan scored a season-high 14 points on 4-6 triples. Once again, the Reds played masterful basketball at the start of the game and retained a high-level performance for almost 25 minutes until ASVEL forced them into uneasy situations and poor shot selection.
“We should have finished the game really earlier, with 17 points up in the first half,” Bartzokas said. “For our team, for our experience, for our guards, we needed to control the game and finish it much earlier. At the end, it was by luck, I don’t know, from a mistake. We made a lot of mistakes: not turnovers, mistakes, in our approach in the second half. T
On the other end, ASVEL began making shots and found a steady offensive rhythm to translate successful defenses into offense.
“Hey, it is basketball, and that’s why it is basketball,” ASVEL coach TJ Parker said. “Down by 20, you can always come back and win. I think we said the words we had to say to fix a couple of things. I think we were not physical enough at the beginning of the game. I think they were the ones who brought the physical impact and as soon as we rose our level up to their physical impact and played good defense, you could see in the second half. It was much better.”