Barça’s cup penalties passed suddenly, which recovered the good path turning the page on what happened in Badalona with a more than important victory against Monaco at the Palau. In the final stretch of the regular season of the Euroleague, the Catalans took one more step to ensure home field advantage in the playoffs, settling in third place, only behind Olympiacos and Real Madrid.
With the echoes of the painful defeat against Unicaja a week ago still in the air, it was difficult for Jasikevicius’ team to send Monaco to the canvas, a team from the Principality of those in full growth, as certified by its excellent European career this course. But Obradovic’s men could not face a Barça team that knew how to recover from a tremendous scoring slump in the last quarter to draw a new victory and definitely look forward.
Jasikevicius’ men dominated at will in a magnificent first half, in which they scored easily, climbing to 50 points towards the locker room. With Abrines pointing the way from the triple and with a Vesely in steamroller mode, having fun like in a few days on the parquet scoring, rebounding and assisting. Barça was widening the differences little by little. Just a couple of long shots from Loyd and some action from Motiejunas tried to stop the Barca gale. Vesely delved a little more into the wound with the 42-30 (minute 16).
Barça came out very deep after the break and did not even remotely presage the final suffering with which they would end up signing the victory. A triple from Abrines made it 56-41 (minute 22) and practically stretched out the red carpet for the Catalans. But that basket acted as something of a sedative for his team and it was Monaco who woke up with a start to start cutting back. A controversial attacking foul on Higgins, accompanied by a technique on Jasikevicius, just turned everything on.
With little energy, out of the game, Barça spent the first 5 minutes of the last quarter without scoring and James cut back to 65-62. That was the end of the visiting reaction. With a very misguided Laprovittola, Satoransky took the reins of the game and pointed the way to victory.
80. Barça (24 26 15): Satoransky (15), Laprovitttola (5), Abrines (9), Mirotic (7), Sanli (5) -cinco inicial- Vesely (12), Kalinic (8), Higgins (12 ), Tobey (2), Kuric (0) and Jokubaitis (5).
70. Monaco (18 21 18 13): James (14), Loyd (13), Brown (6), Diallo (13), Motiejunas (5) -starting five- Okobo (9), Moneke (0), Blossomgame ( 4), Ouattara (0) and Hall (6).
Referees: Matej Boltauzer (ESL), Tomislav Hordov (CRO) and Piotr Pastusiak (POL). No deleted.
Incidents: match of day 25 of the Euroleague played at the Palau Blaugrana in Barcelona before 6,840 spectators.