By Cesare Milanti/ info@eurohoops.net
If you turn on the Basketball Champions League, you kinda know that MHP Riesen Ludwigsburg has to be there when the game starts to become harder and harder. Over the past few years, they’ve reached the final stages of the competition three out of four times, getting the bronze medal in the 2022 Final Four.
That’s why when Josh King’s team was leading 50-28 with 04:30 left in the second quarter of the decisive Game 3 in the Play-Ins Series against Limoges CSP, in front of a firing black-and-yellow audience, nobody was giving the French team a chance. But then, Bryce Jones happened.
Massimo Cancellieri’s team, which started the BCL Regular Season with three consecutive defeats and managed to reach the 3rd spot in Group F behind BAXI Manresa and SL Benfica, reduced the gap more and more, especially thanks to the American playmaker, who stepped up when needed.
And that’s when he found Shonn Miller in front of him with less than 20 seconds on the game clock at the opportunity to tie things up at 86-86, forcing OT. “I just took my time. Late in the game, you don’t want to really be nervous. You’ve really got to take your time and know that little time is a lot. I kind of just felt him disappear, so that when I didn’t see him anymore, I was like “I’m free to shoot”. I didn’t even think, I just went on autopilot and shot the ball”, he confessed to the Basketball Champions League’s website.
But since he started to take this game as the best of his season with the French team, why not make it one of the best of his whole career, putting in one of the craziest game and series winners in the history of the competition? Exactly.
94-94, the ball goes to Justin Johnson in the high-post, when the former Reggio Emilia power forward knows he can be unguardable. He goes up for the jump hook which doesn’t go in, and Shonn Miller couldn’t tip that in. And the rest is history, as Bryce Jones delivers on the other side.
“It’s a great feeling, especially at that moment. Those are the type of moments that you train and practice hard for, to win those kinds of games. It felt pretty good, a surreal moment. And now I’m just one and down, trying to get back to the process and focusing on what’s next”, he said in an interview with Eurohoops.
Breaking down that long-two buzzer-beating shot, the Murray State product, who started his overseas career in Montenegro in 2018 and went on to step up his game in the ABA League with FMP Belgrade, knows exactly how big that moment is for him.
“It’s definitely on my Mount Rushmore. I had some buzzer-beaters before, but this one here, being at the time of my career playing a do-or-die game in Europe, it’s just crazy. That’s a huge moment for me in my career. Those are the type of shots that every basketball player want to take and make, being in those kinds of moments”, he added.
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Limoges can count of course on the contribution of Bryce Jones, the former Telekom Baskets Bonn player Javontae Hawkins, home-crowd favorite Nicolas Lang, and the list goes on. But a crucial asset who will be missed for at least six weeks is Desi Rodriguez.
After the win in Germany that sealed the deal and gave the French side the 2-1 victory in the best-of-three series against Ludwigsburg, the whole team dedicated it to the American small forward, who coincidentally played with the black-and-yellow team in 2020-21.
“Desi is a big part of our team and of our success. When he went down we all felt bad for him and about the situation, it was an unfortunate one. I told him specifically that I got his back no matter what. We would have made sure that we do our part to keep our journey going. Doing it for him and sacrificing our agenda and putting it aside for Desi, to play for him. That speaks on behalf of our chemistry, we’ve got a great group of guys here”, Bryce Jones said about his teammate.
And if they managed to conquer the nickname of “Comeback Kings of the BCL”, a great contribution came from Massimo Cancellieri, who joined Limoges CSP in 2021 after several years as an assistant coach in Milano and two seasons on the bench of Ravenna, in the Italian second-division.
“Coach is a tough one, but it’s tough love. You need to have the right mental approach to be coached by him, you must be in the right mindset because he’s going to challenge you every day. I think that when you get used to those challenges, when you face adversity just like in our last game, being down 20 points, we didn’t end backed down. We still knew we could come back and win the game. That’s a true testament to how the coach prepares us every day. Nobody really sees it but he challenges us every day: that’s why we are prepared for these types of battles, and we can do crazy things as we did”, the former FMP Belgrade point guard commented on Cancellieri’s work.
The leader of the French team, in his European cup rookie season, is averaging 15 points and 5.3 assists per game, being almost perfect at the line (97%) and shooting pretty well inside the arc (59.2%). A long-two specialist, who was missed a lot at the beginning of the Basketball Champions League campaign.
“Our start of the season was pretty rough. I wasn’t playing, I had to recover from my injury. Not having your starting point guard can slow things down a bit, and that’s exactly what happened in the beginning. When I came back, I was watching from the bench what the team needed to get better and win basketball games”, Limoges’ number 11 said on the toughest moment of the year so far.
“I felt like I brought that to the table once I started to play. We started winning and working really hard together, practicing and competing at a high level. Now we just seeing the benefits of our work. I feel like we deserve everything that’s coming toward us because we work hard pretty much every day”, Bryce Jones added on his contribution.
🗣 “𝗜𝘁’𝘀 𝗱𝗲𝗳𝗶𝗻𝗶𝘁𝗲𝗹𝘆 𝗼𝗻 𝗺𝘆 𝗠𝗼𝘂𝗻𝘁 𝗥𝘂𝘀𝗵𝗺𝗼𝗿𝗲.” ⛰
🎥 𝘽𝙧𝙮𝙘𝙚 𝙅𝙤𝙣𝙚𝙨 breaks down the two shots that sent @limogescsp to the #BasketballCL 𝐑𝐨𝐮𝐧𝐝 𝐨𝐟 𝟏𝟔! 🍿 pic.twitter.com/spJ7N30Bug
— Basketball Champions League (@BasketballCL) January 19, 2023
Bryce Jones got everybody used to the fact that he can become unstoppable when the whole team needs him to. So the Round of 16 with opponents like Unicaja Malaga, Galatasaray NEF, and AEK is surely a hard stage to go through. But he isn’t really worried about it.
Despite the level of talent shown in the whole competition and especially in Group K with guys like Dylan Ennis, Akil Mitchell, Kendrick Perry, and the newest Turkish addition Daron Russell, Bryce Jones believes they can really go all the way till the Final Four.
“I feel like if we continue doing what we doing, not get caught up by the outside noise of who got who, we focus and work on ourselves, staying together as a team, no matter who we play we can win the game. That’s my mindset going into this next phase, taking one game at a time and sticking to the game plan for each one. As long as we execute it and listen, I think we can win again. I have no doubts”, he said about Limoges CSP’s path at the final part of the European season.
At the end of his breakdown with the BCL’s official website, he underlined once again the status of his team. “Now we are here, we’re doing the unthinkable. I want it to stay that way, I still want us to be the underdogs and keep challenging and battling guys every night. Just keep waking the world up, with each game”, Bryce Jones added.
He wants to hike that Mount Clutchmore again like done during the road trip in Germany, and then shouts from the top how hungry he is. The Basketball Champions League valley is ready to receive his echo.
PHOTO CREDIT: Basketball Champions League