By Eurohoops team/ info@eurohoops.net
Thanks to a decisive 4 -15 run after the score was made 53- 53 early in the fourth period, Fenerbahce defeated an Erick Green-less Valencia 80 – 67 in Spain to claim its 11th victory in 17 games of the EuroLeague regular season.
With their top scorer (15.9 p.p.g.) out, the hosts didn’t manage to keep up with their opponents’ fury (29 points) in the final period after spending a lot of energy to recover from an early 0 – 15 (!) deficit and even take the lead 47 – 39, six minutes in the second half.
They didn’t manage to preserve their advantage and once they trailed 57 – 68 with four minutes remaining, they crumbled.
Fenerbahce traveled to Valencia minus Jan Vesely and James Nunnally yet had five players scoring in double figures plus an excellent defensive effort down the stretch to win the match.
Marko Guduric finished with 15 points, Gigi Datome added 14, Jason Thompson 13 and Kostas Sloukas a double-double of 11 points plus 10 assists while Ahmet Duverioglu gave some key helps from the bench with 10 points and 3 assists in 14 minutes.
But the top performer for the reigning champions was Nicolo Melli who may have scored only 6 points, but grabbed 11 rebounds and stole the ball four times for a game-high 20 PIR.
Only Alberto Abalde (11 points) and Tibor Pleiss (10 points, 5 rebounds) scored in double-digit numbers for Valencia that fell to 5 – 12, losing its first game after two wins in a row.