By Eurohoops team / info@eurohoops.net
Nikola Mirotic’s first EuroLeague game after five years was crowned with success for him and his team. The Spanish-Montenegrin forward scored nine out of his game-high points 24 points in the fourth period as Barcelona beat Anadolu Efes 74 – 64 on the road to kickstart the season in a typical fashion.
Efes had a couple of essential injury problems since it missed guards Shane Larkin and Rodrigue Beaubois, apart from Adrien Moerman, who’s expected to be back in action around December. Newcomer Alec Peters had 16 points while Vasilije Micic added 14 points (4/13 triples) plus five assists.
Mirotic shot 24 points with 5/8 2-pointers, 4/8 3-pointers, and 2/2 from the line en route to pushing Barca to victory. Malcolm Delaney had an important contribution to Barcelona’s win with 11 points and seven assists in his own EuroLeague return after 2016.
The former All-EuroLeague guard also hit one of the two game-sealing buckets with a triple for the 53-66 with 3 minutes left to play. Mirotic then made it 61 – 74 even from beyond the arc to shut down all Efes‘ hopes for a possible turnaround.
Pesic: It’s important to win against Efes
And coach Svetislav Pesic didn’t hide his satisfaction after the final buzzer: “Important game, to win against Efes. That always brings a good mood in the first game. Both teams showed they need time. They don’t have all the players. But Efes gave their maximum. I think we improved our boxing out and controlled the defensive rebounds in the second half, and that gave us some confidence to take some three-pointers from outside. That was very important and decided the game.”
Efes fell behind by 16, 26 – 42, early in the second half, but came back to 46 – 49 with less than three minutes left in the third period. Barca reacted with a 0 – 7 run in the fourth quarter to gain control of the game for good this time.
Brandon Davies added 10 points, five rebounds and four assists for Barca. From Efes, Tibor Pleiss scored 13.
“It was a terrible evening for us, we played terrible basketball,” Efes coach Ergin Ataman admitted. “I do not recall us scoring just 64 points last season, especially in a home game. It is impossible to win by producing 64 points”.
Here’s what happened in Istanbul.
Photo credit: EuroLeague