De Colo, the top scorer!

By Lefteris Moutis / moutis@eurohoops.net

Nando De Colo emerged as the top scorer of this season in the Euroleague and is going to receive the ‘Alphonso Ford’ award!

In his second year with CSKA Moscow the French guard raised his performance dramatically and closed out the season with the impressive figure of 18,9 points on average! At the same time, he’s the ninth best passer and sits at the top of the evaluation system.

De Colo’s lead in scoring came very easily and was a long way ahead of the next players on the list of the top scorers. The award of the top scorer is handed out on the eve of the Final Four and is given to the player with the greatest point-average up to that point.

The impressive fact that occurred this season and is unique in the history of the Euroleague is that the player who finished second is another CSKA guard, Milos Teodosic.

De Colo’s best performance was the 30 points he scored in the 10^th game of the Top 16 against Barcelona in the Spanish city. The only time he scored a single-digit number of points in a total of 25 appearances was in the premiere of the playoffs, when he scored just 7 points against Crvena Zvezda.

The Euroleague will present Nando De Colo with the ‘Alphonso Ford’ award, which got its name from the legend of European basketball courts, Alphonso Ford, who won the title of the top scorer two seasons in a row (2001-02) wearing the colors of Peristeri and Olympiacos (with an average of 26 and 24,8 points per game respectively) and passed away prematurely on 4 September 2004.

De Colo is of course the first Frenchman to win this particular distinction and only the third European after Igor Rakocevic and Linas Kleiza. CSKA’s guard is also a candidate for the MVP of the season award and if he wins he will be the vey first player to win both these awards.