Another week, another Wednesday and Euroleague action. It was not as discouraging as last time I spoke about it but here are the things I experienced tonight.
The day started with the CSKA vs. Zalgiris game which I did only follow through the Live Stats on euroleague.net which worked quite "normal" today. I was happy as my new Euroleague Fantasy acquisition Ramunas Siskauskas was doing great and finished the game with 27 Eff points. Unfortunately, JR Holden was fouled out and these minuses made his performance fantasy wise a little less good.
During the cooking, I started Euroleague TV to watch the duel between Partizan and Lottomatica. Nikola Pekovic was once again back with some monster stats and finished once again with fantastic 30 Fantasy points. What is even better is that he gets the 10% bonus as the Serbs defeated the Italians where my man Jon Stefansson started to hit its shots in the second half. 15 more Eff points for the guy from Iceland (and not from Finland as said the commentator on Euroleague TV).
I did not finish that game as I wanted to check how Roanne is doing against Panathinaikos. What’s a better possibility to see a David vs. Goliath matchup. I just checked before how my other new players did. Drew Nicholas was missing everything, he was at 2/11 at that moment and van den Spiegel was trailing badly in Piraeus. And during that time, Panathinaikos was easily dominating Roanne with a Dimitris Diamantidis going for tons of no-look and behind the back passes. It is not even half-time right now, and the score is 49-33. I think I have to switch to another second half to have a more entertaining evening. At least, Roanne is thinking on adding some new talent to their team as they are close to sign their last year star Aaron Harper (recently waived by Mariupol) and Golden State waived Stephane Lasme. Wow, the game is at halftime now and Panathinaikos scored 64 points on a crazy three point buzzer by Diamantidis.
I went then to Vilnius to check if Drew Nicholas is still missing but the first play I saw was him landing on the feet of a Lietuvos Rytas player and being out of the game. However, he must have made some shots as he was at 12 eff points at that moment. And Efes should go for a win as they make their crucial free-throws. So I went back to Clermont to watch Panathinaikos celebrating basketball against Roanne.
As the most intense game is actually at Siena, I will follow the final minutes from the Pala Mens Sana and let PAO destroy Roanne in beauty. And to have a nice link, the first guy I see on the court is former Roanne guard Dee Spencer who is actually playing for Virtus Bologna. But the player who is doing it all is Vlado Ilievski with a nice bounce pass on the break, a big three to equalize and an and one play on a huge drive. Oh, it is easy to trash on the Euroleague commentators but talking about Delonte WEST when Delonte HOLLAND has the ball; I don’t know. But also what a bad finish of the game for Virtus. Giovannoni forcing a three pointer, nobody running back and Lavrinovic breaks it down with a huge slam. On the next play, yet another forced shot and Giovannoni with a foul and a technical at 30 seconds before the end. Game over.
It did not look very good for Ljubljana at the beginning of the last quarter when I checked in, but actually they are back in the game after a three pointer by Goran Dragic. Olimpija is really there now and a very close call by the referee on a back court violation stopped the game for a few moments as some sodas flew to the court. But the nervosity is there now too as Booker loses control of the ball running down alone to the basket for the uncontested slam. This looked like a turnaround and definitive decision in this game as Tau is going ahead again with 19 points.
