Zalgiris Kaunas (10-6) started the EuroLeague double-round week with a win. Andrea Trinchieri’s team defeated ALBA Berlin (3-13) by 86-66 (24-10, 21-20, 24-16, 17-20) on the road.
Sylvain Francisco paced the Lithuanian side with 16 points while Lonnie Walker IV tallied 13 points, 7 rebounds and 4 assists for Zalgiris.
David McCormack scored a career-high 19 points and Yanni Wetzell added 15 points, 8 rebounds and 5 assists in the loss.
Zalgiris got on the board first and twice was evened by ALBA before Francisco converted a three-point play and three-pointer for a 12-7 early cushion. Deividas Sirvydis and Brady Manek sandwiched triples around 4 Ignas Brazdeikis points in a 12-0 run over the final 4:17 minutes of the first quarter for a 24-10 Zalgiris lead.
Zalgiris scored the first 4 points of the second quarter to increase the run to 16-0 to go up 28-10. After Trevion Williams ended ALBA’s 6-minute scoreless drought, Manek and Walker went back-to-back from deep and the advantage swelled to 34-12. Dovydas Giedraitis’s three-point play had Zalgiris still up 41-20 before ALBA scored 8 straight points for a 41-28 gap. Zalgiris led 45-30 at the break.
ALBA started the second half in good fashion with the first 6 points to make it a single-digit deficit at 45-36. Zalgiris needed more than 2 minutes to score but had the next 6 points to re-establish a 15-point gap. The Zalgiris defense was back up to speed and triples by Sirvydis and Francisco made it 63-42. Manek added a third three-pointer and the score was 69-46 after 30 minutes.
Zalgiris did not let ALBA really cut into the margin in the final frame, leading 75-49. Not even a quick 5 points to make it 72-54 with 5 minutes left helped. The hosts did not get closer than 17 points the rest of the way.
