By Eurohoops team/ info@eurohoops.net
Kostas Sloukas hit the 1000-points mark in EuroLeague as Fenerbahce Beko player in his squad’s 84-66 home win over Anadolu Efes in Round 24.
Sloukas finished the game with 17 points in addition to Nikola Kalinic’s 15 while Luigi Datome added 13 points. For Efes, Adrien Moerman nailed game-high 18 points while Shane Larkin scored 13 points.
Efes nailed three shot from deep early to go ahead 17-9 but Datome’s buzzer-beating triple and Nicolo Melli’s block sparked Fenerbahce’s 11-0 run until the end of first quarter (20-17). The run continued with Fener scoring first five points of the second period until Larkin finally stopped it with a steal and easy layup (25-19). Efes stayed close for a couple of minutes but the hosts slowly took over and after two triples by Kalinic went on the halftime rest with a 43-27 advantage.
Fenerbahce boss Zeljko Obradovic was content with his team’s performance but sees room for improvement: “We need to continue to play. We have six more games. To be focused and continue to prepare every game like its the final game. This is the only way. It’s true that we played a lot of minutes very good, but we played some minutes without concentration, so we need to think about that.”
Both teams stepped up on the defensive end in the second half and although Efes managed to cut the lead to ten points in front of the final period (57-47), they couldn’t go any further. Fenerbahce went off hitting a couple of heavily contested shots, increasing the lead past the 20-point margin (73-54) and securing the game.
“They played great basketball tonight, especially on the outside, three-point shots. They’ve hit five or six shots over hands and at the last seconds. We’ve lost the control of the game in the first half, we mad a lot of turnovers. Second half, I think we played a regular game, our game but it was a great night for Fenerbahce and they are the best team in Europe”, coach Ergin Ataman noted.
Fener stayed on alone at the top of the standings with 21-3 while Efes holds a 15-9 record.