By Eurohoops team/ info@eurohoops.net
Bogdan Bogdanovic scored 27 points, tying his EuroLeague career-high as Fenerbahce came back from a 11-point deficit in the fourth quarter to beat a Spanoulis-less Olympiacos 67 – 64 in Istanbul for the 23th Round of the regular season.
This key victory improved Fenerbahce‘s record to 15 – 8 and the last season’s finalists keep standing strong at the fourth place of the classification table. With 16 victories, Olympiacos remains third, also managing to preserve the tie-breaking advantage vs Fener after the nine-point win in Piraeus.
Still, the Turkish team grabbed a victory that was urgently needed after the previous round’s defeat by Darussafaka Dogus. Bogdanovic’s impact was huge, not only because of his 27 points (5/8 two-pointers, 3/5 from beyond the arc, 8/9 free throws) and 4 assists but also because his “spoke” in a timely fashion for the winning squad.
With his team down 47 – 58, early in the fourth period, the Serbian guard dropped 8 points including he go-ahead three-pointer for the 61 – 60. A bit later, he sank a key lay-up that made it 67 – 62 with 71 seconds to go. Fenerbahce had previously completed a 15 – u run that transformed the score from 50 – 60 to 64 – 60 in just five minutes.
Olympiacos, that had played excellent basketball in the third quarter to enter the final stretch with a double-digit lead, thanks to Erick Green (17 points), Kostas Papanikolaou (12 points, 8 rebounds) and Giorgos Printezis (10 points, 7 rebounds) failed to close the match appropriately.