By Eurohoops team/ info@eurohoops.net
During the first half, Zalgiris was unstoppable. However, when it was all said and done, Olympiacos got the 92-85 to remain tied at the top of the Turkish Airlines EuroLeague standings with Monaco and a 13-6 record.
Sasha Vezenkov finished the night with 24 points and seven rebounds, Shaq McKissic added 17 points, Evan Fournier had 14, and Thomas Walkup had 13.
“Zalgiris did pretty everything they wanted in the first half, they scored 52 points”, admitted Vezenkov and added: “But our second half was our best defensive game this season so far”.
Sylvain Fransisco scored 22 points to tie his EuroLeague career high, but only two of those points came in the second half. Deividas Sirvydis added 12 and Lonny Walker also had 11 points.
However, Zalgiris finished the game with 14/36 threes, which is impressive, but like Fransisco, they only made 3/19 in the second half. As coach Giorgos Bartzokas said, “We couldn’t allow them to have 65% in three for 40 minutes.“
The Lithuanian team dropped to a 10-9 record, keeping a spot in the Top10 of the standings.
Olympiacos in control after halftime
Zalgiris had a 16-6 start with Sylvain Fransisco scoring 12 points on 3/4 threes. Olympiacos reacted to make it a two-point game (18-16), however, at the end of the period the score was 22-18 for Zalgiris and the lead was extended to 10 (32-21) after a three by Brady Manek.
In a game of runs, the Reds reacted to make it a four-point game (44-40), but Zalgiris closed the first half leading by 12 (52-40) having 11/17 threes and Fransisco already had 20 points.
Bryant Dunston opened the second half with a shot that pushed the lead to 14 (54-40), only for Olympiacos to react again and close the gap to one (62-61) after a three by Fournier.
Zalgiris closed the period with 1/10 threes, still up by four (71-67), but a three by Vezenkov and one more by Shaq McKissic to start the fourth quarter gave Olympiacos finally the lead (73-71).
One more shot by Milutinov followed for a 10-0 run by Olympiacos (75-71) forcing a Zalgiris timeout with eight minutes left. Olympiacos continued their run getting an 80-71 advantage (15-0) with five minutes left, as Zalgiris finally scored for the first time in the fourth quarter thanks to Dunston (80-73).
Zalgiris couldn’t trim the lead by more than four points, Thomas Walkup with a big three made the score 87-78 with less than three minutes left. Zalgiris once more made it a four-point game (87-83) with 1.31 on the clock, they had two defensive stops but didn’t score after that until it was too late finishing the game with 19 turnovers.
Photo credit: Eurokinissi