By Eurohoops team / info@eurohoops.net
Real Madrid prevailed over Herbalife Gran Canaria with a tough 75-67 victory on the road for Round 17 of Turkish Airlines EuroLeague.
Sergio Llull was the leading scorer of Pablo Laso’s team, as he added 16 points, along with four assists and one steal. It was a challenging game made easy in the end also thanks to the efforts of Rudy Fernandez (11 p.) and Gustavo Ayon (10 p.)
The hosts took advantage of Real’s poor offensive performance in the first half and managed to lead the game, though the tables turned in the final period when the latter made its comeback to the game to seal its 14th victory of the season.
To be exact Gran Canaria entered the last quarter leading by four (56-52), however, already the comeback of Real Madrid, which was trailing by seven at half time (34-27) had begun.
Fernandez who scored eight of his points in the last period was among the key players for the win.
Gran Canaria, that was led by Eulis Baez and Albert Oliver who scored 12 points each, falls to a 6-11 record in the standings. The hosts ended up making just five threes in 22 attempts, while Madrid made 10 out of 24 and they got beaten despite ending the game with just three turnovers.
On the contrary, as Madrid coach Pablo Laso said: “We had 12 turnovers in the first half and you cannot win a game giving the ball away 12 times without even shooting. Easy fast breaks for them. The situation was that we were all the time behind them in the first half. I think that in the second half we were able to recover from that kind of situation. We didn’t turn the ball over and had better decisions offensively. I’m happy for the turnaround in a game that we knew it was going to be difficult“.
Photo credit: EuroLeague