Once again, it is Wednesday and the Euroleague has restarted. Here are the thoughts from the night where only 4 games were played.
I just read the nice article from SLAM Online about the French All-Star game, as their writer Lang Whitaker was in Paris for the News Year’s Eve with his sister and their respective partners. Very interesting read by the way. Then I started only my Euroleague TV , as it was not working before, and check in to the game between CSKA Moscow and Olimpija Ljubljana. And the first name I heard, made me already cry. PapalAUkas. Come on. This is definitely unbelievable. If the commentator has problems with the name of Andrei Vorontsevic or I don’t know whom. But Papalaukas. The game is set in fact already as Moscow is up by 20 in the fourth quarter.
The game is over now, and I want to check the stats of my fantasy heroes. Unfortunately, the stats sheet shows the score at 6-8 after a few minutes. So I have to wait a few minutes (?) to see. As the next game only starts at 20h30 (or is it 19h45? According to the EL website it is 7:45pm in the left column and 20h45 in the right column).
Okay, so the game in Greece really started at 7:45, so I missed the beginning and actually PAO is already up by 10 when I checked in. But the Serbes behind a fantastic effort of Dusan Kecman just came back into the game to bring it back to four points at halftime. Nikola Pekovic also has already 10 ranking points but he only score 2 out of 8, so he has still some nice potential to bring more fantasy points.
Second half started well for the Greens as they hit some three against the Partizan zone. And Milt Palacio together with Milenko Tepic combine for missed layups and a -16 ranking right now. Now another ranking god enters the court as Uros Tripkovic steps into the game with -7 efficiency.
At the end of the thrid quarter in Athens, I just wanted to check how my French friends of Roanne are doing but what a huge error by myself to try to switch games. Because EL.TV crashed again and actually I could not put up any stream to be working. But luckily the stream is back and I did not miss a lot in Athens as Panathinaikos is still up with 12. WHATTTT??? Jaseekeveejuzz? No this was probably even worse than Papalaukas. Ok, back to the game. A big three pointer “in the face” by the “Rookie” Tripkovic and Partizan is coming closer in these final minutes of the game. Wow, and now the commentator thinks that “there are already a lot of drunk people” in the stands when they show some close shots of Gate 13 fans. Sincerely, I really don’t know who is drunk when I hear him talking.
After a little scoring run orchestrated by Tripkovic, but Saras comes up with a huge three and a fine lay-back to go back to a 5 point lead. The last seconds of the game and there comes up some kind of an imaginary foul call against Tripkovic to give V-Span 2 FTs but he misses the second. Pana leads now with 3 and a Time Out for the Serbs with Partizan ball under the PAO basket. And what a nice defensive effort to get the ball back after a layup by Palacio but then a last drive by the American guard got stopped. And the following out of bounds play for Partizan was not successful and PAO goes away with a 1 point win.
So I switched to France to check what Barcelona is doing in Clermont Ferrand against Roanne. And it looks at the moment like a typical Roanne game. They are up and now in the third quarter, the larger bench of Barcelona seems to make the difference as the French start to make little errors and Barcelona is taking the lead. And now third quarter is over and Barca is up by 6. And I also want to the mention the good commentating on this game.
And the last quarter starts with a rejection by the little man, Marc-Antoine Pellin. But unfortunately, Brion Rush is off as he can not connect the open three ball to bring his team back to 3. But Roanne is hustling back and William Soliman throws down an impressive three-point-play dunk that is even appreciated by Zoran Savic in the stands.
Lakovic kills the game with a huge three pointer from the corner after having caught an offensive rebound sitting on the court. And there he is again with a left handed jump hook to seal the game definitely as Barcelona is up 7 at 44 seconds before the end. But again, I do the same error by switching games. I miss the end of the Roanne- FCB game and can not move to Unicaja-Milano.
And when EL.tv works again, it is already garbage time in Malaga as Paulao Prestes jams home a huge win for the Spaniards that extends their home winning streak in the Euroleague to 13. By the way, it looks like some people have not a lot to do in the Euroleague offices as there are two commentators on this game which ends 89-70.
