Valencia Basket couldn’t handle a Zalgiris in a state of grace. The Kaunas team, the best in attack and defense in the Euroleague, painfully defeated Pedro Martínez’s team (86-77). The Barcelona coach had made it clear the day before that this was not the match that worried him the most among the many that await him this season. “It’s very nice if we win, and if we lose, the championship continues…”
His team managed to impose itself in one of the most uncomfortable corners of the Euroleague, the Zalgirio Arena, where it met the most toned opponent in Europe in front of a heated audience, packed in a monumental pavilion. Pedro Martínez’s team did not let themselves be intimidated, someone who knows very well October’s MVP, Sylvain Francisco, the mastermind of Zalgiris, who he coached in Manresa and who he had tested his entire battery of bases. The ‘taronja’, against an opponent so well trained in defense, failed to shoot from three points. Yet Zalgiris knew him well, even in the minutes in which Pedro Martínez opted for a very tough quintet, with the debut of Braxton Key with Valencia in the Euroleague and Isaac Nogués, who plays little but always takes advantage of it with excellent defensive work.
Zalgiris did an extraordinary job in defense, stopping the penetrations of Valencia’s small players very well and being very aggressive under the basket, with a lot of presence of Azuolas Tubelis. In attack he let himself be carried away by the pace of Francisco, who always found the best solution for his team. Tomas Masiulis knows that his rival drowns when he cannot run and has concentrated a lot of effort on this task. If the defensive transition was overwhelmed by the speed of the ‘taronja’, the coach did not care that his players spent personal fouls in exchange for stopping Valencia’s counterattacks. A non-negotiable bet. With this approach, the Lithuanian team seemed to dominate the game a minute before the end of the first half (35-28), but at that moment Jean Montero emerged to straighten the game and be able to close the second quarter with options (38-35).
The best thing about Valencia is that they didn’t let Zalgiris’ good defensive decisions get them down. The Taronja team showed patience, without losing their composure, and in the third quarter, with Sergio de Larrea in command, they once again showed their head on the scoreboard (42-43). The talent of Omari Moore challenged the power of Moses Wright, who dominated the rebound with Tubelis (18 clearances between the two).
The match begins to unravel and, although Zalgiris dominated the scoreboard, we enter the last quarter with a higher goal rate and with Valencia happy to finally be able to run. The two teams, in a relentless and exciting clash, advanced side by side. Without major differences and without a clear dominator. Everyone took advantage of their virtues and this helped both as the minutes went by.
Masiulis let the two teams trade blows as he held Francisco under formaldehyde. The coach took him off with five minutes remaining to condemn the incident. The Frenchman began to decide the duel, which lasted as long as Jaime Pradilla could resist. But at the last moment Zalgiris prevailed, a very balanced team, without any big stars, who scored their seventh victory.
