By Aris Barkas/ barkas@eurohoops.net
Six Euroleague games were played on Thursday and only in one the hosts prevailed. Real Madrid, EA7 Milano, Maccabi Tel Aviv, Crvena Zvezda and Lokomotiv Kuban prevailed on the road and got valuable wins.
The most thrilling game of the night was played in Heraklion, Crete, where punished Panathinaikos hosted Lokomotiv Kuban. The Russians had a 69-66 lead with 14 seconds to go, Dimitris Diamantidis on the night of his 200th Euroleague game tied the score with 6 second left and finally Krunoslav Simon with a three on the buzzer gave the win to the guests (72-69).
In Vilnius, Lietuvos Rytas gave a valiant fight, tied the game against Maccabi Tel Aviv with 12.6 seconds to go thanks to a three pointer by Martynas Gecevicius (24 p.) but the final shot belonged to Tyrese Rice who gave the road victory to the Israelis (74-72), their first ever against Rytas.
In Bamberg, despite missing three members of its front line (Lawal, Kangur, Gigli), EA7 Armani Milano got an important win over Brose Baskets (76-62) with Alessandro Gentile scoring 18 points. The hosts shot just 5/21 three pointers, despite being having a tremendous 44,2% from downtown in the first three games of the season.
In Vitoria, Crvena Zvezda won its first game in the current form of Euroleague by beating Laboral Kutxa by ten points (73-63) and also Real Madrid destroyed Strasbourg (85-66) also on the road, but this result was more or less expected.
In Istanbul, the game was tied for three quarters between Anadolu Efes and Zalgiris Kaunas, but with a 12-2 run in the start of the last period the hosts got the 72-61 win, being the only team that defended successfully its home court.