By Cesare Milanti / info@eurohoops.net
In the second-to-last Turkish Airlines EuroLeague Regular Season game, FC Barcelona lost 84-76 on the road against the already-eliminated from playoff contention Olimpia Milano. Despite the loss, Kyle Kuric had his best scoring performance of the season.
Spending 24:38 minutes on the court, the 33-year-old veteran shooting guard provided his season-high 17 points, scoring 4/5 from beyond the arc and being perfect (3/3) at the line. This year, he has been averaging 4.6 points in only 12:21 minutes on the court, but against Milan, he was by far the best player on Sarunas Jasikevicius’ team.
Talking following the loss, the naturalized Slovakian guard explained the reasons 0f this outcome. “Always missing shots doesn’t help. In the first part of the fourth quarter, our defense was really bad. They were getting open looks and pretty much everything they wanted. At the start of the fourth quarter, we had a lot of bad fouls, and we lost the game on our hands. If you don’t score the ball on offense you can’t win, but our goal is always playing good defense and that’s where how confidence comes from”, he said in an interview with Eurohoops.
Before the game against the red-and-white Italian team, the Catalan side was on a four-game winning streak that gave it the early home-court advantage. “I think we’ve been playing really well, especially recently. This game was just a bad one for us, but other than that we’ve had a long streak of good wins. Now we are moving forward, with one game left before the playoff start. We have to keep improving and try to reach the playoffs with a good moment”, Kyle Kuric summed up Barcelona’s season so far.
While in the post-game press conference, Sarunas Jasikevicius chose Zalgiris Kaunas as the team which exceeded his expectations fighting for a playoff spot, the former Gran Canaria and Zenit Saint Petersburg shooting guard spent good words for the other two clubs as well.
“Partizan had a great second half of the season, they are playing really well. They have had a great season. Zalgiris Kaunas also surprised a lot of people, and Baskonia is a crazy good and amazing team on offense this season. There have been a couple of teams that have been playing really well, we have to see who’s getting in and who’s not”, FC Barcelona’s number 24 said on who’s in the playoff race.
Finally, after being featured in the latest Table Talk documentary by EuroLeague Basketball talking about healthy habits, the Louisville Cardinals product explained whether he changes them once the playoffs arrive. “Pretty much the habits and the things I do on a daily basis don’t really change that much. Maybe a couple of tweaks in and there to see how my body is doing. I think the biggest thing that changes is that everything goes up at any level: on the court and especially off the court”, he said.
“When once the playoffs start, that’s where things take another step forward and it becomes even more competitive than in the regular season. Mentally you definitely need to switch off from the classification to trying to prevail against others to get to the Final Four and try to win. Everything kinda switches to mentally too”, Kyle Kuric added referring to the fiercest part of the season.
PHOTO CREDIT: Turkish Airlines EuroLeague