A leader with more character than casualties (87-89)
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BadalonaBarça won an extremely difficult match on the court of UCAM Murcia (87-89) marked by the absences of the three pivots of the Barça team: Brandon Davies, Sertaç Sanli and Pierre Oriola. Without a clear five, Sarunas Jasikevicius contributed by the young James Nnaji and by different tactical variants, like the one to place Rolands Smits and Nigel Hayes-Davis in inner positions. Nikola Mirotic (30 points and 8 rebounds), Nico Laprovittola (17 points) and Dante Exum (17) played.
The first quarter was hell for Barça. The local team imposed its physical level in the first minutes in which the Catalan team did not find good positions of outside launching and lost too many balls. Local power translated into a 17-point difference that set off all alarms (25-8). Far from it, Saras was able to make tactical changes to get his players back on track. The points of Mirotic, Laprovittola and Exum and a change of intensity in defense served to tie the score just seconds before the break (42-42).
Barça stepped up their defense to seize the pace of the game during a third quarter in which UCAM Murcia’s offensive production was reduced to Isaiah Taylor’s points. The Barça team reached the last ten minutes with a five-point advantage (60-65). The match was decided in the last seconds, when the local team was not able to force overtime.
La Penya secures first place (97-79)
Badalona Youth beat Slask Wroclaw (97-79) and secured the first position of the regular season in the Eurocup. The victory of the Peña accompanied by the victory of the Virtus of Bologna against Gran Canaria crowned the green-and-black team as the best team in the second European competition. The Catalan team secured the track factor in all the qualifiers. Albert Ventura was the best local player with 16 points and 3/5 triples. In addition, Simon Birgander added 16 points and 10 rebounds against a rival who could only compete during the first quarter of the match played at the Olympic Palace. The youth team’s game, which distributed 19 assists, served to leave the leather of group A without options. With the decided result (81-57), the coach Carles Duran gave minutes to the young Maronka and Kraag.
