By Aris Barkas/ barkas@eurohoops.net
Thursday night started and ended with a bang. In Istanbul, Barcelona playing without Juan Carlos Navarro beat Fenerbahce/ Ulker (76-73) and in Milan, EA7 Olimpia destroyed back to back Euroleague champions Olympiacos by beating them by 30 points (81-51).
It was an embarrassing loss for the Greeks, who by scoring 51 points repeated their worst offensive performance in Europe’s top competition, dating back from 1979 and a game against Maccabi Tel Aviv. Now the Reds have a 1-1 record and are tied with Milano (1-1) which needed such a big win in order to gain confidence for the rest of Top16. Keith Langford with 29 points was unstoppable for the winners.
Barcelona’s top gun was Marcelinho Huertas with 19 points, still the game was decided in the last second when Bojan Bogdanovic lost the final shot who could have led the game to overtime. Barcelona has a 2-0 record and the top spot in Group E after this result, while Fener is still at 0-2.
In Tel Aviv, Maccabi beat for the third time in the season Lokomotiv Kuban (85-75) in a game decided in the last six minutes, when a three point difference for the hosts reached double digits (81-68) after a 12-2 run. It was a team effort, despite the crescendo of Sofoklis Shortsanitis who had 22 points in 15 minutes.
In Munich, Partizan proved to be more than feisty, lead for three quarters, but in the end Bayern with a 19-9 partial score in the last ten minutes got the 71-65 win and remained unbeaten and tied in the top of Group F with Maccabi Tel Aviv.