By Eurohoops team/ info@eurohoops.net
Fenerbahce Beko registered a new club record for 3-pointers with 20 to blow out Virtus Bologna 104 – 72 at home and grab its third straight EuroLeague win, remaining in the Top 4. It was a spectacular performance by the Turkish side and quite a game for 2015 EuroLeague MVP Nemanja Bjelica to make his return to the team and his season debut.
Naturally rusty after months of inactivity, Bjelica played 11:16 and finished with two points plus two assists. Five of his teammates scored in double figures: Dyshawn Pierre dropped 20 points with 5-7 threes, Johnathan Motley had 16 points plus seven rebounds, Marko Guduric posted 16 points (4-4 triples) while Scottie Wilbekin added 15 points on 5-7 3-pointers. Nick Calathes contributed 11 points plus eight assists.
“We were getting a lot of open shots in transition,” Guduric said. “We are staying true to our routine, every day in our practice we are doing the same thing, actually a lot of similar shots you saw tonight in transition. We just have to stay humble, stay on the ground. A lot of new players are coming, players from injuries as well, so we just have to stay together and keep playing like this.”
It was Guduric who hit the record-breaking triple, his team’s 18th, with a bucket from beyond the arc for the 94 – 59 with five minutes remaining. His team had already established a large margin since the second quarter following a 20-0 run for the 33-14. They never looked back, shooting the lights out to finish with 20 out of 40 from beyond the arc.
Virtus, that had started the game up 6 – 12, was unable to contain the action of Fenerbahce and trailed with large margins after the first period. If things couldn’t get any worse, guard Alessandro Pajola was forced to exit the game with an injury in the end of the third quarter.
Marco Belinelli led Virtus with 18 points, Toko Shengelia had 10 points plus five rebounds and Jordan Mickey pitched in 10 points for the Italian team, now 12-14 and 12th in the standings. “We have to re-watch the game,” Virtus coach Sergio Scariolo said. “Learn from mistakes and especially try to understand why, when the opponent put such a high level of physicality, we did not respond in the same way.”
Fenerbahce coach Dimitris Itoudis commended the selfish attitude his players had on the floor, which led to many open shots.
“The players are very experienced, I talk with them a lot of times,” Itoudis said. “They know we have only 40 minutes to share and we have certain roles to fulfill and everybody is having a concrete role what he is doing on the team. We found a way. We also kept working hard when we were not playing the best. We are the same team, we kept being persistent on what we are doing, we kept believing that we have potential. Today we played a brilliant game, yes. Is it going to be every game like that? No. We have to find other ways to win games and we need to find our identity. And our identity was to be humble and to play for each other, and today we did that.”