By Eurohoops team/ info@eurohoops.net
Mike James led the charge with 23 points and seven assists, Matthew Strazel added 18 and Jaron Blossomgame had 17 as Monaco beat ALBA in Berlin 105-90.
However, the real news was that finally, Nick Calathes made his season debut with six assists and Monaco stayed on top of the Turkish Airlines EuroLeague standings, together with Olympiacos with a 13-6 record.
As Monaco coach Vassilis Spanoulis said: “We had a great first half, great offensively and defensively. After that, we started very relaxed and naif in the third quarter. We let them find the rhythm and ALBA has nothing to lose, they can shoot and make threes. But we showed character”.
Still, Spanoulis wasn’t satisfied. “The win”, he answered when asked what he was keeping from the game.
After a bad first half, ALBA became competitive with Yanni Wetzell and Matt Thomas scoring 17 points each, but they really didn’t have a chance to win and remained dead last in the standings with a 3-18 record.
Easy night for Monaco
Monaco was leading 30-21 after the first quarter and opened the second with an 11-2 run (41-23) to create a huge distance after just 13 minutes of play as Mike James and Matthew Strazel already had 10 points each.
The game was all but over too early and the lead was up to 20 (53-33) after a bucket by Giorgos Papagiannis.
The halftime score was 55-35 for Monaco and naturally, the guests relaxed a bit in the second half, maybe a bit too much, but they were never in real danger.
ALBA took advantage of this to trim the lead to 12 (79-67) at the end of the third period and even made it an eight-point game (98-90) in the last two minutes, only for Blossomgame to seal the deal with a three (101-90).
Photo credit: EuroLeague