By Cesare Milanti / info@eurohoops.net
MILAN, Italy – Recovering the originally suspended EuroLeague Regular Season Round 2, Maccabi Tel Aviv found an important 98-90 win on Italian soil to leave EA7 Emporio Armani Milan second to last in the standings with a 1-4 record, bouncing back from the heavy loss suffered in the Principality against AS Monaco. This is Milan’s third straight European defeat.
Jasiel Rivero and Lorenzo Brown were surely the protagonists in the P&R action for Oded Kattash’s team. Coming off the bench, the former Valencia player had himself a night down there with 21 points mainly captured on the glass, shooting 8/9 from two.
Serving him passes on the silver plate, Lorenzo Brown ended the encounter with a double-double of 20 points and 12 assists. “We’ve been through a lot this month. Lack of practices and games, but we have to come here every single night and play with intensity. It’s a weird situation but we’re trying to balance everything”, he said after the win against the Italian red-and-white team.
“I’m very proud of the guys, we were coming off a bad loss, we performed badly. We stuck together, we showed some character, we promised ourselves we were going to pick up each other, and we fought. We miss the people of Israel, that’s a great win for us”, Oded Kattash commented in the post-game interview. “Thoughts in our minds are with the people in Israel, we miss playing in our home. That’s what makes it even more special for us”, he added in the press conference.
While the Cubanian center provided intensity under the rim subbing in, Josh Nebo helped by being perfect on two-point shooting (6/7) for a total of 14 points. Delivering the umpteenth decisive game of his EuroLeague tenure with the Israeli team, Bonzie Colson put up 16 points and 6 rebounds, while Antonius Cleveland added 15 points for his squad’s win.
Continuing his impressive offensive start of the EuroLeague season, Nikola Mirotic had another high-scoring losing effort after dropping 32 points in the away defeat against ALBA Berlin: facing the yellow-and-blue Israeli powerhouse, Milan’s superstar had 24 points with 4 rebounds and 3 assists. Shavon Shields added 22 points and 8 assists, while Johannes Voitgmann brought home 18 points and 6 boards.
“We lost a game where he made 25 assists, we shot 40.0% from three. Another game where he gave up 100 points. Honestly, we are very very worried because playing strong defense has always been our intensity. Today there was no opposition, Maccabi ran and rebounded on offense, and they scored on P&R and isolation. We made an effort to share the ball on offense, but that’s not enough. We need to work a lot and try to make some corrections. I understand the frustration of our fans because we started the season with much higher expectations”, Ettore Messina commented after the loss.
An impressive scoring first half anticipated Maccabi’s win
The game started with an exclamation mark by the guests, as Antonius Cleveland found his way to the rim for a one-handed dunk, followed by five consecutive three-pointers by both teams (Milan 3, Maccabi 2). Maccabi Tel Aviv went up 16-13 before the first televised time-out of the game at 5:33 minutes on the clock by shooting 100.0% (5/5 2PTS, 2/2 3PTS) from the field.
The home side got back the lead following a contested three-pointer by Nikola Mirotic at 3:14 to go in the first quarter. Maccabi Tel Aviv’s first missed shot came with 2:53 minutes on the clock in the first quarter; before that, the Israeli team was shooting 9/9 from the field. After that missed three-pointer by Jake Cohen, they couldn’t restore the lead before the second quarter, which Milan opened up by seven (32-25) with 7/10 from two and 5/5 from the three-point line with 10 assists.
Bringing out a glimpse of what he provided for the Italian national team at the 2023 FIBA World Cup, Stefano Tonut ferociously attacked the rim at 7:25 in the second. From then on, Maccabi Tel Aviv entered a 7-0 run to reduce the deficit to three points (37-34) with 6:07 to go. Trusting Antonius Cleveland and thanks to a crucial sequence by Josh Nebo at the end of the first half, Maccabi Tel Aviv made sure Milan could go to the locker room only with a two-point lead (52-50).
The second half started with Shavon Shields scoring from beyond the arc, but Bonzie Colson rapidly made the yellow-and-blue team bounce back with a 2+1 play; Lorenzo Brown scored from downtown with 7:32 on the clock in the third for the 60-59 lead. Both teams got small leads and lost them in a matter of minutes before the last ten minutes of the whole encounter, which began with Maccabi up 75-72 following Jasiel Rivero’s reversed layup’s buzzer-beater to close the third quarter.
When Maccabi Tel Aviv seemed to have the game in full control, Nikola Mirotic scored from three-point range without a single dribble at 5:38 minutes to go, keeping Ettore Messina’s afloat, down by only two points (81-79). After minutes of sufferance, with 2:59 left in the game, Shavon Shields banked in from beyond the arc to reduce Milan’s deficit to one point (85-84). However, Lorenzo Brown and James Weeb III re-established things immediately after Maccabi’s timeout, contributing to the final win.
In the EuroLeague Regular Season Round 6, the Italians will play their second game of this International week at home against AS Monaco on November 2 at 20:30 CET. Maccabi Tel Aviv’s (3-2) clash with Real Madrid, instead, got suspended and will be originally recovered later on.
PHOTO CREDIT: Turkish Airlines EuroLeague