Jasikevicius’s Barça could not miss the final four in Kaunas, the hometown of the Lithuanian coach. Fate was so written that the Barça team sealed their classification this Wednesday precisely in Kaunas, striking down Zalgiris on the fast track and avoiding unnecessary suffering. It will be the third consecutive presence of the Barcelona fans among the four best in Europe, all of them under the umbrella of Saras, and the 17th in total for Barça.
The Barça team could not choose a better setting to sign such a beautiful feat, as always the Zalgirio Arena was dyed a spectacular green, perhaps anticipating what can happen in that same pavilion in two weeks in the final four, drawing an incomparable atmosphere that It seemed not only to make Barça nervous but also to Zalgiris himself. The staging of neither of the two contenders was not worthy of a Euroleague playoff, the Lithuanians were more forced, forced to raise a double match ball.
The succession of errors and the making of one bad decision after another by both of them was tremendous. It looked like the party straight out of a horror movie. He lost one ball after another to Barça, up to eight he accumulated only in the first quarter with surreal actions like Jokubaitis bouncing the ball off his foot, and it was too difficult for him to look at the basket. In fact, he only shot eight field goals in those nightmarish opening ten minutes. He didn’t offer much better for the Zalgiris, for which the ring seemed to be the diameter of a strawberry yoghurt.
With a local idol on the visiting bench, Barça was accumulating points with enormous difficulty, only supported by Vesely’s wrist that would fade later, but the Lithuanian ineffectiveness served them on a tray at 3-13, which was raised by a triple from Jokubaitis, another ex of Zalgiris.
Dimsa’s irruption mutated the duel and, under his command, the green team signed a 12-2 run that balanced the forces. By then, Barça’s attacks were an absolute disaster. Vesely was unable to fine-tune again, Laprovittola went to halftime with a single shot for the basket, missed of course, and some desperate loss, and Mirotic did not score his first points until minute 18 thanks to a good three-pointer. A basket that nipped in the bud the reaction of Zalgiris, who had threatened to make it 24-19 with a basket from Birutis, too comfortable. The 26-29 with which the first half ended explained perfectly what had happened on the parquet, with two teams that were too nervous and without any kind of success.
The time in the locker room did not finish suturing the wound in the offensive rebound that continued to damage Barça, but it did fix the problems in the fluidity of the game for the Catalans. Jasikevicius’s men moved much better and based on triples they opened a gap on the scoreboard. The 32 points they scored in the third act were hardly answered by Zalgiris. Satoransky was the one who started the operations but it was Tobey who perfected them with three consecutive triples until 45-61 just before the last quarter. A triple on the buzzer from Lekavicius propelled a 10-0 run for the Lithuanians that threatened to give Barça a headache, but Vesely’s wrist returned to its place and some good minutes from Jokubaitis turned off the reaction and pointed the way. of the final four.
66. Zalgiris Kaunas (10 16 22 18): Taylor (6), Brazdeikis (7), Ulanovas (13), Butkevicius (6), Smits (0) -equipo inicial-, Polonara (2), Dimsa (8), Hayes (4), Lekavicius (8) and Birutis (12).
77. Barça (13 16 32 16): Satoransky (14), Laprovittola (3), Abrines (9), Mirotic (9), Vesely (14) -initial team-, Jokubaitis (11), Kalinic (2), Sanli (2), Kuric (0), Tobey (13) and Martinez (0).
Referees: Damir Javor (ESL), Tomislav Hordov (CRO) and Uros Nikolic (SER). No deleted.
Incidents: third game of the Euroleague quarterfinals played at the Zalgirio Arena in Kaunas (Lithuania) before some 15,000 spectators.
