Barcelona used the second and third quarters to steamroller their way to an 82-66 victory over Olympiacos in the Euroleague Top 16.
After a cagey first ten minutes, Barcelona took control in the second to lead 45-31 at the half, and any hopes of an Olympiacos fightback were snuffed out in the third quarter as the Liga Endesa side showed no signs of slowing down, racing to a 71-47 at the end of three to make the game safe.
The win also gives Barcelona the all-important head-to-head advantage over their Greek rivals
And was a Greek who did the damage as Stratos Perperoglou paced the winners with 16 points and Tomas Satoransky added 14 for the victors who break even in Group F and go to 4-4 overall. Olympiacos though, drops its fifth game in six and falls to 3-5.
“We had to play tougher,” Perperoglou said. “It was a difficult win against a difficult opponent, but we played good and deserved the win. We started from defence. We were able to play good defence and we were able to score some easier shots on offense. We hope this is the beginning of our comeback. It’s a tough group and we need to win a lot of games from now on.”
Crvena Zvezda celebrated a 91-82 win over Anadolu Efes in Group E in a game played at the Millennium Center in the Serbian city of Vrsac.
Quincy Miller paced Red Star with 15 points as the Serbian side rallied from a 46-38 half-time deficit to burst clar in the final period, using a 14-2 run in order to claim a priceless victory and improve to 5-3 and claim the head-to-head over the Istanbul-based unit.
“From the very beginning, we were good on offence but there were problems in defence,” Crvena Zvezda coach Dejan Radonjic said. “We had many problems with Efes’s offensive rebounding.
“The guests were leading by eight points after the second quarter, but in the third we came to the court ready to play more aggressive. We managed to limit their offensive rebounds and my team played very clever. This is a big win for us.”
