By Eurohoops team/ info@eurohoops.net
With 6 minutes left on the game clock, it looked like Unics Kazan would return to Euroleague taking a superb win against Barcelona at home. Yet in the end, the Spaniards’ experience and advanced “know how” for difficult crunch times situations made all the difference for them to leave Russia victorious 63 – 69.
It was no other than Juan Carlos Navarro who rallied his teammates for a splendid comeback from a 14-point deficit. “La Bomba” scored 11 out of his 13 points in the final period, showing that the years don’t steal anything from his clutch charisma.
Justin Doellman was the top performer for the winning side, dropping 23 points and grabbing 5 rebounds, while Ante Tomic added 13 plus 9 rebounds.
Few would have believed that Barcelona could manage to pull this off, given how utterly ugly their performance was for the vast majority of the game. The Blaugrana couldn’t catch a break on offense, partially because of their own inability to score but also because Unics made their life extremely difficult through Latavious Williams (12 points, 15 rebounds) immense efforts, not only on defense but on the other end as well.
Coach Pashutin’s players were leading 58 – 44 in the mid of the final period, but their opponents managed to drop 20 (!) points in 5 minutes while receiving only two, making it 60 – 64 only few plays before the final buzzer.
That was their doom, which destroyed everything they fought of in the previous parts of the match.
Keith Langford had 13 points (albeit shooting with 5/16 from the field) for Unics, also dishing 5 assists.