By Eurohoops Team/ info@eurohoops.net
The third round of the 2019-20 EuroLeague Regular Season featured its share of statistics. EuroLeague via Synergy Sports Technology’s latest weekly Stats Review installment presents selected key elements from Barcelona and Maccabi FOX Tel Aviv to Nikola Milutinov.
Per EuroLeague: Only two teams remain undefeated after Round 3. Here’s a review of the key statistics in the competitive Turkish Airlines EuroLeague landscape.
High-Gravity Matchup
In the Round 3 matchup between the Turkish Airlines EuroLeague’s most efficient offensive and defensive units until then, FC Barcelona’s stout defense held ALBA Berlin’s dynamic offense in check to remain unbeaten. By limiting ALBA to only 0.91 points per possession – well below the 1.11 that had ALBA atop the EuroLeague rankings after Round 2 – FC Barcelona shined in what was a surprisingly uneven performance.
What made Barcelona’s defensive a bit unusual was how many points they surrendered in transition. The average EuroLeague team is scoring 8.6 points per game in transition this season, and though ALBA is among five teams averaging over 12 such points per game, on Friday the visitors scored 25 points over 18 transition possessions, which is likely to persist as one of the top single-game marks this season. It’s even more impressive when you consider that Barcelona had allowed only 14 points in transition through the first two rounds. But despite ALBA’s high transition scoring, Barcelona allowed the visitors just 56 points over 71 half-court possessions, including just 6 in finishing situations, another mark likely to hold up for the whole season.
Despite the contradictions for Barcelona in this game, their offense held up more than well enough to earn a win as Nikola Mirotic and Cory Higgins combined to score 40 points in just 24 possessions. The most efficient duo of high-volume scorers in the EuroLeague to this point, Mirotic and Higgins combined to shoot 8 for 11 from beyond the arc.
A lot went right for Barcelona in this game. Ante Tomic shot a perfect 7 for 7; the team forged a +24 rebound differential; and Barcelona controlled the action in the second half. Most important, however, is that Barcelona’s defense passed its biggest early test to continue ranking first in the EuroLeague by allowing just 0.83 points per possession.
Read the rest of the Stats Review on EuroLeague.net.