CSKA Moscow began their quest for a quarter-final birth with a hard-fought 86-78 win away at Olympiacos.
Trailing 44-40 at the interval, CSKA won the third quarter 22-14, which built their platform to victory.
Nenad Krstic led the victors with 18 points with 10 of those coming from the charity stripe. Russian international Viktor Khryapa chipped in with 16. Andrei Kirilenko returned to the CSKA Moscow fold with 11 points in 34 minutes.
Olympiacos, were led by Martynas Gecevicius’ 14 points. Leading scorer Vassilis Spanoulis was held to 11 points.
“I am very glad because we won this game against a very good team,” CSKA Moscow coach Jonas Kazlauskas said afterwards.
Kauslauskas praised Olympiacos’ offensive onslaught in the first half, but was happy with how his team coped with the pressure in the third and fourth periods.
“It took us only three minutes to start playing good defense and after we stopped Spanoulis, the situation became much better for us,” he said.
Montepaschi Siena got their Top 16 campaign off to a good start, as they defeated Gescrap Bilbao 81-67 at the Palaestra.
18 points each from Bo McCalebb and David Andersen led the Italian giants to victory. With the game tied at 32 at the half, Siena scored 49 points in the second half of play, restricting Bilbao on all areas of the court.
Kostas Vasiliadis led the Spanish side with 16.
Unics Kazan came from behind to defeat Fenerbahce 76-71 in a thrilling encounter.
Trailing 41-24 at half-time, thanks to a 23-9 second quarter from the Turkish side, Unics came storming back in the third to trim the lead to three (56-53) and take control in the fourth to win it.
Three players scored 16 points (Domercant, Samoylenko and Lyday) but Vladimir Veremeenko led the victors with 17 points on the night. Bojan Bogdanovic led all scorers for Fenerbahce with 24.
