Three home sides took a critical leads in Euroleague quart-finals series on Friday night and could secure places in London next week.
Olympiacos downs Anadolu Efes (Olympiacos lead 2-0)
Reigning champions Olympiacos will travel to Istanbul hoping to finish the series next week after a comfortable 71-53 win in Piraeus against Anadolu Efes.
For the second game in a row the Turkish side struggled from beyond the arc hitting just 13% of their three point attempts. Efes’ leading scorer Jordan Farmar was limited to just 8 points.
Vassilis Spanoulis led Olympiacos with 15 points and 8 assists as his side made a strong push for getting an opportunity to defend their title in London.
“We are leading 2-0 and we came closer to our target, which is to make it to the Final Four and defend our title”, said Olympiacos coach Giorgos Bartzokas after the game.
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Real Madrid keep homecourt advantage (Real Madrid lead 2-0)
Spanish giants Real Madrid increased their lead to 2-0 after downing Maccabi 75-63 in front or nearly 11,000 supporters. The visitors managed to recover from a devastating loss in the first game but still came short of winning the game.
Pablo Laso’s team took a nearly five-point lead in the game and maintained it for most of the game with Maccabi coming close on few occasions.
An improved Maccabi’s defence still couldn’t contain Segio Llull who had the game of his career so far with 26 points. The Spanish international made 4/5 two-point shots as well as 6/8 three-pointers.
Meanwhile David Logan led Maccabi with 19 points having scored just 2 in the first encounter.
There was also a rather high number of blocked shots among both teams – 15 shots were blocked in total.
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CSKA Moscow crush Caja Laboral, again (CSKA Moscow lead 2-0)
Caja Laboral appear to be no match for last year’s finalists CSKA Moscow. Russian champs recorded another easy win in Moscow beating their opponents 90-68.
A lack of concentration by CSKA saw Caja Laboral take a 26-20 lead after a high-scoring first quarter. Ettore Messina demanded more his players as CSKA turned an upper gear in defense as well as in offense.
The hosts won the remaining three quarter by a total of 28 points letting their opponents score just 14 points per quarter.
CSKA’s front-court led the team with three player scoring 16 points each: Nenad Krstic, Sasha Kaun and Zoran Erceg.
Maciej Lampe was the top scorer for the Spanish side with 19 points but it will take much more than that if Zan Tabak’s side wants to avoid a clean-sweep next week in Vitoria.
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