By Eurohoops team/ info@eurohoops.net
Thanks to the big night of Tyrese Rice who scored 25 points on 7/10 threes, Barcelona got an easy 94-82 win over Valencia in the showdown for the second place in the Liga Endesa standings. The winners have now a 10-3 record and Valencia has to settle for 9-4, while Juan Carlos Navarro made history again.
After the first seven balanced minutes of the game during which the two teams were tied at 16, Barcelona thanks to its defensive effort managed to get the lead and closed the first half with a 14 points advantage (44-30). Valencia tried to pick up its defensive tenacity and managed to cut the lead to 3 points (59-56) but the answer of the hosts were four three-pointers, three by Rice and one by Doellman as the third period ended with Barcelona leading by 13 (71-58).
The fourth quarter started with a 5-0 run by Barca, which included one more three by Rice and the best that Valencia could do after that was cut the lead again to 13 points (84-71) and to 12 (94-82) at the final buzzer.
Juan Carlos Navarro became the 4th all-time scorer of the Spanish league after this game over Granger Hall with a total of 8046 points. He needed five at the first quarter in order to get that milestone.