By Eurohoops team/ info@eurohoops.net
Facundo Campazzo finally made his long awaited Turkish Airlines EuroLeague debut for Crvena Zvezda Meridianbet, as the ban of the club for registering new players expired on the last day of February, but that did not help in Germany.
Bayern Munich made a crucial fourth-quarter push to stop Zvezda and get a 87-80 win, making things complicated for the Serbs on their run to the playoffs. Zvezda now has an 11-15 record on the 13th position of the standings, while Bayern is one step behind at 10-16.
Vladimir Lucic and Cassius Winston led the way with 20 points each to a big-time victory.
As Lucic said: “As we said a few days ago, we don’t know what is going to happen for the next period in the EuroLeague, maybe we don’t have that much of a chance for the playoffs but we want to compete, and that is what we did”.
For Zvezda, Luca Vildoza scored 18 points, Facundo Campazzo added 16, and Nemanja Nedovic had 15 points.
While Zvezda started off well, it was Lucic’s three-pointer at the end of the first quarter (19-23) that sparked the home side to take over the game in the second quarterVildoza stopped a 10-0 Bayern run with a three-pointer, but Zvezda’s main problem was Winston, as no one was able to slow him down.
He scored nine points just in the second quarter and while Vildoza was keeping Zvezda alive, Hunter and Giffey have allowed the hosts to get a 41-38 hallftime lead.
Whatever coach Dusko Ivanovic said to his team at half-time, it worked for a while.
Crvena Zvezda came out firing at all cylinders and racing to a nine-point lead (52-43). The trio of Vildoza-Campazzo-Petrusev was responsible for most of the points in this period as tthe guests entered the last period leading by four (56-52).
A Bavarian comeback
It was looking all good for the Serbian team, but it all came crashing down for Zvezda as Bayern made a late push from the three-point line.
For Bayern coach Andrea Trinkieri the resilience of his team was the key: “Even in the worst moments, we kept playing. With mistakes, I believe that we were with our back to the wall but we didn’t give and kept playing. It is a huge win for us”.
Obst and Walden hit big-time shots down the stretch as Bayern came out victorious ending up scoring 35 points in the last quarter and getting the lead in the last three minutes.
“This shows that one basketball game is 40 minutes, not 37, 36, 38, 39.”, was the short comment of Zvezda coach Dusko Ivanovic who also talked about the trip of Campazzo to Argentina for the FIBA Windows.
As Ivanovic said about his star guard who played his first EuroLeague game this season: “He tried to play, tried, and it is clear that he stayed five to seven days with Argentina, and maybe this is the problem why he didn’t play better. But he is one important guy for us, and we will play good (in the future).”