By Eurohoops team / info@eurohoops.net
With five players in double figures, Anadolu Efes beat Olympiacos Piraeus 85 – 72 to grab a very important win in the race for the EuroLeague Play-In tournament. The Reds suffered their first loss after six straight wins to drop to 18 – 12.
Shane Larkin had 15 points plus six assists for Efes. Will Clyburn scored 14, Derek Willis added 13 points and Rodrigue Beaubois dropped 12 points. Elijah Bryant contributed 10 points as Efes as a whole finished with 14 out of 27 3-pointers.
“It was a tough loss at ASVEL. Today we did the job,” Beaubois said. Thanks to this win, his team improved to 12 – 7 to get one win closer to the Play-in zone. “Now we have to take it one game at a time. We have one more game in two days and we have to bring the same energy. When we play at home, we have the fans with us and we can feed off of them. The most important thing is to believe.”
Alec Peters stood out from Olympiacos with a game-high 19 points plus five rebounds. Moustapha Fall had 14 points (on 6-6 shots) and Kostas Papanikolaou finished with 12 points, six assists plus five boards. Thomas Walkup pitched in 10 assists to go with his four steals but just two points (0-5 from the field) for the Greek side that saw head coach Giorgos Bartzokas getting ejected in the last seconds after some very intense protests towards the referees.
Threes to get a head start
Efes, that led from start to finish, finished the first half with 10 out o 14 triples to go to the locker room with a 48 – 37 advantage. Olympiacos responded to approach 62 – 61 shortly before the end of the third period but their opponents had their own reaction with a 10 – 0 run to reclaim a double-digit advantage.
Clyburn put Efes up 81 – 66 with 2:53 remaining. Despite two triples by succession by Olympiacos, the visiting side couldn’t overcome that margin. “Defensively we weren’t sound,” Olympiacos coach Nikos Pappas said. “We weren’t like we were in the past few games. Efes had 10 out of 14 3-pointers in the first half, which showed their quality and our [lack of] defensive effort.”
“The players and the fans together, the synergy… they did amazing job,” said Efes coach Tomislav Mijatovic. “Big thanks to them. We fought, we played against a great team. We’re going to celebrate tonight and then we’re going to focus on our next opponent, ALBA on Thursday.”