As always, I’m only reporting on the games in which an NBA player did something of note. For all the scores, complete stats, and additional information on the Euroleague, visit their website. I keep it pretty basic so I highly recommend checking out their site. If only the CBA had such a nice site… or any site published in English.
Wednesday, November 23rd
CSKA Moscow 95, Zalgiris Kaunas 82: My main man Sonny Weems really bounced back from what had to be one of the worst games of his professional career in his previous Euroleague match. He scored 22 points on 9-16 as he managed to almost singlehandedly keep his team in the game for a while… but no one else stepped up and the wheels fell off late. Zalgiris was actually playing pretty well early on. They flirted with small leads, but they began to turn the ball over a lot in the second quarter and fell back by nine. Ty Lawson was a nonfactor, as usual. He scored his first and only points at the 8:10 mark of the third. Nenad Krsitc led CSKA with 21. They were without Andrei Kirilenko, who recently suffered a broken nose.
Olympiacos 88, Gescrap 81: Vassilis Spanoulis dropped a week-high 29 points while dishing a team-high 6 assists for Olympiacos in the seven-point victory.
Anadolu Efes 67, Partizan 58: Partizan’s NBA duo of Acie Law and Nikola Pekovic produced just 13 points on some horrendous 6-20 shooting. The rest of the team wasn’t any better… Partizan shot 39% from two and 25% from three. For Anadolu Efes, The Machine was in full effect. Sasha Vujacic dropped a game-high 21 points on 6-11.
Thanksgiving
Real Madrid 93, Belgacom Spirou 89: Serge Ibaka’s contributions have been pretty limited thus far, but he had a solid game for Madrid this week. Serge came off the bench to score 12 points and grab 9 boards in just 23 minutes of play. He also swatted 5 shots. Other than that a bunch of NBA guys were notably bad. Rudy Fernandez scored 3 points on 4 shots for Madrid, and Jiri Welsch had 4 on 4 shots for Belgacom.
GS Medical Park 78, Asseco Prokom 76: Zaza Pachulia posted a huge double-double (19 points, 10 boards) to lead his team to a two-point victory. They were actually 30 seconds from defeat, but some dude named Jamon-Alfred Lucas knocked down a clutch three-pointer to send the game to OT. They fell behind again, but Pachulia made a go-ahead hook shot at the one-minute mark of OT to make it 77-76. Prokom failed to score from that point on. First-round draft pick Donatas Montiejunas dropped 22 points, grabbed 10 boards, dished 2 assists, collected 3 steals, and swatted 4 shots in a losing effort. One hell of a line there!
Maccabi Electra 85, Emporio Armani 76: Big numbers everywhere in this box score. Maccabi’s big man Sofoklis Schortsanitis was the game’s leading scorer with 28, and their NBA PG Jordan Farmar pitched in with 21 of his own. Danilo Gallinari put up 24 for Armani.
SLUC Nancy 76, Bennet Cantu 75: Nicolas Batum has been a bit inconsistent for Nancy. He played 33 minutes in this one, but he was only able to produce 4 points and 5 boards while racking up 5 turnovers. As you can see, Nancy did manage to escape with a one-point win despite his not-so-stellar play.
FC Barcelona 76, Union Olimpija 46: Juan Carlos Navarro became the Euroleague’s all-time leading scorer in this ass-kicking. His 14 points in 19 minutes were actually a game-high, too. Olimpija went 1-12 from three-point land and scored just 18 baskets in the whole damn game.
KK Zagreb 86, Brose Baskets 74: Zagreb’s big men, Mario Kasun and Sean May, cleaned the glass (20 combined rebounds) and contributed a total of 21 points in the 12-point win. Zagreb won the battle of the boards 50-37. In his Euroleague debut, former Pacer/Craptor/Buck TJ Ford racked up 10 assists in 13 minutes. Impressive! He did go scoreless on 0-3, though. Former Memphis Grizzly Casey Jacobsen dropped 19 in a losing effort.
