By Eurohoops team/ info@eurohoops.net
The players of Anadolu Efes were the ones supposed to enter this”do or die” match, with a knife between their teeth, but the team to dominate was no other than Fenerbahce. Demonstrating their superiority, particularly during the third period, the hosts won the game 90 – 86, eliminating their opponents from the playoffs and, indirectly, opening the Top 8 door to Crvena Zvezda and Panathinaikos.
With 24 points and 7 rebounds, Luigi Datome‘s offensive game was once again a spectacle to behold, while Bogdan Bogdanovic bombarded from behind the arc (4/9) adding 21 points of his own. Generally, coach Obradovic‘s players imposed their own rules during the majority of the second half and their guests sometimes almost looked helpless.
Even though Efes possessed the motivation, at the same time, it lacked the tools to stop Fenerbahce from running the show per its desires. Thomas Heurtel finished the game with another double-double (14 points and 13 assists) but he and his teammates were lackluster to a disappointing degree on defense.
Coach Ivkovic’s team had managed to stay quite close to Fener for 20 minutes and the score at the beginning of the third period was 37 – 36. An unstoppable Datome led his team through a 16 – 10 run and at the mid of the final quarter, Pero Antic made it 76 – 58 for his team. Efes scored an almost unbelievable number of 28 points in the last minutes of the game, got really close on completing a possible comeback, but that proved to be only the swansong heralding its inevitable elimination.