By Eurohoops team/ info@eurohoops.net
It goes without saying that the tremendous crunch-time (and not only) show of Luka Doncic stole the spotlight in the game between Real Madrid and Zalgiris Kaunas. After all, the 17-year-old Slovenian guard practically gave victory to the “Blancos” single-handily with his actions down the stretch.
Sarunas Jasikevicius was naturally asked about Doncic’s performance during the post-game press conference. “From time to time there’s a player like him”, said the coach of Zalgiris Kaunas. “I don’t know if he is cool headed and if he works. Everything depends on him. He has talent enough and I think he has the personality as well to make the decisions. He took some very difficult shots in the last quarter but a bit crazy. A more experienced player would try to win fouls, for example. He will learn from this. He’s a world class talent.”
The Lithuanian team came very close to what would have been a stunning road win, but Doncic and some late mistakes stole them this opportunity. “I believe in general, we didn’t do what we had to do to win,” were Saras’ thoughts. “We can see that in the 96 points that Madrid scored. We missed a lot of details, we missed a lot of small things. And in general if you want to win here against Madrid, it’s impossible if you give up 96 points. We were lucky in some situations in the attack. We knew we could damage them in some situations. And we were smaller but faster in some positions. We were there, but during the break, I told my players we need to be tougher and make them score less. But we still gave up 25 points in the third quarter and 22 in the last one. A little better than in the first half, but it was not enough.”
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