With an excellent defense, FC Barcelona managed to beat Crvena Zvezda 60-72 and climb back to the top of the standings with 15 wins and six defeats.
CSKA has the same record (15-16) as Barcelona, but the team from Spain has the tiebreak advantage over the Russian squad (0-2). On the other side, Zvezda is at 7-14 after Round 21 in the EuroLeague.
Barcelona led from the beginning of the match and, with good defense,pushed Crvena Zvezda to shoot from long range. The home team wasn’t really successful at the beginning and after 40 minutes they managed to score eight out of 30 attempts for three points (26.7%). The Spanish squad was much worse, they only scored 2 out of 18 (11.1%).
A low percentage for threes didn’t stop Barcelona to claim the victory in Belgrade, all thanks to the amazing defense. Allowing Zvezda to score only 60 points is a huge success for a team like Barca because the team is usually playing fast and offense-oriented basketball.
Cory Higgins with 14 points was the leading scorer for the visitors. Pierre Oriola added 12, Rolands Smith 11, and Nick Calathes 10. For Crvena Zvezda, Ognjen Dobrić with 11 points was the only one with a double-digit score.
