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The defeats of Fenerbahce (87-74 to Armani) and Real Madrid (76-60 to Anadolu Efes) stood out in the fourth round of the EuroLeague.
Here are the five things that highlighted last week’s games:
The “battle” of the best low-post forwards in Europe
Baskonia got its second win in this year’s EuroLeague and the main reason for that was Tornike Shengelia. Baskonia rallied past Olympiacos (82-66) in Vitoria with the battle between Georgios Printezis and Shengelia being the highlight of the contest.
Namely, Shengelia finished the game with 25 points (9-16 shooting night and 2-6 from the arc), while grabbing nine rebounds and having three assists.
According to Overbasket, the forward from Georgia had an MVP-level performance with +28 in impact rating, while his team averaged a +29 every 100 possessions in points difference and conceded 78 points per 100 possessions on the defensive end.
On other hand, Printezis made a good start, but he finished the contest with 8 points, 2 rebounds, 1 assist and a loss to the game showing flashes of his beautiful post play.
The shocking injury of Clyburn
CSKA Moscow improved to 4-0 in the EuroLeague standings, but lost Will Clyburn in the process, who evidently suffered a serious injury in the victory against ALBA Berlin.
Clyburn went down with a knee injury and had to be assisted off the court at the 3:53 minute mark in the second quarter.
The injury seemed pretty bad as Dimitris Itoudis told reporters, with the MVP of last season’s Final-Four not being capable of applying pressure to his foot.
Clyburn eventually suffered a torn ACL on his right knee, which is a very serious development for the Muscovites, who saw a quite pivotal player go down.
The forward from the US averaged about 12.5 points and 5.3 rebounds on 55% in 2P% and 36% in 3P% in four appearances this season.
Fener-Real on crisis
The start for the two European giants is not quite close to what we thought in the beginning of the season. Namely, Fenerbahce have lost 3 of the first 4 games so far (from Real, Red Star and Armani) while Real Madrid experienced their second defeat in a row.
The Spaniards won by 4 in the contest against Fenerbahce and had an one-point difference against Maccabi, losing to Zalgiris and Efes by a +10 margin in the last two contests.
Real Madrid is getting torched defensively, conceding over 89 points per 100 possessions and having under 50% on TS% in the last three matches.
On the other hand, Zeljko Obradovic is trying to find the new balance between the capable offensive players (De Colo, Williams) and the great average in the defensive end the previous season (75.4 points per game), but until now the Turkish “giant” relies mostly on the scoring ability of Nando De Colo.
Sergio Rodriguez defeats former teammate Nando De Colo
Sergio Rodriguez and Nando De Colo created one of the best backcourt duos in the EuroLeague and helped CSKA Moscow win the title in 2019.
On Friday, they faced each other for the first time as opponents, with Rodriguez leading Armani past De Colo and Fenerbahce.
The Spanish guard finished the game with 22 points (8/13 shooting) and five assists, whereas the French combo guard posted 12 points (on just 3/11 shooting).
Messina triumphs over Obradovic in first clash since 2013
In their first battle in five years, Ettore Messina triumphed over Zeljko Obradovic and showed he took over Armani Milano in order to make the Italians a top EuroLeague club.
On the other hand, the Serbian coach has a lot of issues to deal with, as Fenerbahce plays badly in the first part of the season and has already lost three times in the first four games.
It’s worth noting that this week was the first time Zeljko Obradovic and Ettore Messina coached against each other since December 2013. The two head coaches have combined to win 13 EuroLeague titles in the past 27 years.
*Yiannis Bouranis and Alexandros Tsakos contributed to this article!
