By Aris Barkas/ barkas@eurohoops.net
A crucial win by the surprise team of this season, a brawl in the house of the champions, one more triumph for Real Madrid and three more thrilling games opened the 7th gameday of Euroleague on Thursday night.
Nanterre made a great step towards Top16 by beating Partizan just by a point. The final 62-61 win was decided by two free throws made by Trenton Meacham and with six seconds left, Milosavljevic couldn’t make the final shot of the game and steal the win.
In Piraeus, Olympiacos got the 72-54 win against Galatasaray, the Reds registered their best ever start in a season with a 17-0 streak, however the brawl between Pops Mensah Bonsu, Mirza Begic and Giorgos Printezis with the three players getting disqualified was the talk of the game (video). Also in Bamberg, Real Madrid got its 7th win in 7 games this season in Euroleague by beating hosts Brose Baskets 89-69.
The day started with three road wins as Unicaja Malaga and Lokomotiv Kuban dispatched with relative ease Zielona Gora (84-67) and Lietuvos Rytas (84-53) respectively. Lokomotiv after this result with a 6-1 record in Group D got the qualification to Top16. This was not the case in Belgrade, where Maccabi Tel Aviv survived Crvena Zvezda (78-76) in a game decided on the last seconds and to be exact in a missed lay up by DeMarcus Nelson which could have given the win to the hosts.