Zalgiris drops third straight in Euroleague 0
Unicaja registered its first win in Top 16 Group G by downing Zalgiris 86:68 in Malaga, Spain on Wednesday night. Unicaja improved to 1-2 and is third in Group G, one win away from Asseco Prokom Gdynia, second at 2-2. Meanwhile, Zalgiris went down to 0-3 and lost most chances to make it to the Quarterfinal Playoffs due to its tie-break disadvantage against Asseco Prokom, Unicaja and Group G leader CSKA Moscow.
Marcus Brown and Martynas Pocius scored 11 points each for the visitors as Mirza Begic and Dainius Salenga had 10 and 7 respectively.
Travis Watson, who made his return from injury, scored 6 points and grabbed 5 boards in the 13 minutes that he spent on the court.
Juan Dixon led the game with 16 points, Robert Archibald added 15 and 8 rebounds. Georgios Printezis finished the game with 14 and Omar Cook collected 13 points and 7 assists.
“It was a good game for us. We improved the number of minutes playing good defense and focused really well in this game. We are realizing that we have improved in a lot of aspects, but some things are not working well yet. It is also a shame that Joel Freeland saw his improvement interrupted due to his injury, but we hope to bring him back very soon,” said Unicaja coach Aito Garcia Reneses.
Despite a slow start from both teams, Malaga players struck forward in the second part of the first period to finish it with a 21:6 lead.
Martynas Pocius scored six points in a row for his team to get Zalgiris’ game going. With a reduced turnover number, Zalgiris used a 13:0 run to bring the deficit to 25:29. All this was to no avail, as Unicaja went back ahead just as fast as they had lost the control of the game.
“There were some good moments not only in the second quarter. We had a couple of decent stretches in the third and the fourth,”aid Zalgiris interim head coach Darius Maskoliunas.
Pocius’ free-throws had shrunk Unicaja’s advantage to single digits at the end of the third quarter, but the hosts answered back with 8 points with no from Zalgiris in the last minute of the quarter to make the score 64:47 and pretty much decide the outcome of the game.
“90 percent of our opponent points came either after our turnovers or fast breaks. That’s the main reason for the loss. The opponents made a lot of turnovers as well, and if we had committed less, that could have been our advantage. When Unicaja played mid-court basketball, we were fairly good on defense,” Zalgiris coach said.
Both teams didn’t seem to value the ball – Zalgiris made 25 turnovers while Unicaja finished the game with 23.
“Evaluating the game, what can I say when we made 25 turnovers? And those mistakes weren’t caused by a very aggressive defense. We committed simple, sport-school level turnovers – passes out of bounds, fancy moves on the fast-break. These are not explainable at all,” Maskoliunas said.
Zalgiris has lost nearly all chances of qualifying to the next round and needs not only to win all three remaining games, but also favourable results from other matches.
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