Zalgiris finishes season with home win
Zalgiris Kaunas never trailed in taking care of Panathinaikos OPAP Athens 93-78 on Thursday night at Zalgirio Arena. A 14-0 run early in the second half helped the Lithuanian champs pull away for good and the lead reached 24 in the fourth quarter as Zalgiris cruised to victory. The result gave Zalgiris a 17-17 record at the end of the Turkish Airlines EuroLeague Regular Season. Panathinaikos dropped to 11-21 and still has two games remaining. Lukas Lekavicius paced the Zalgiris scorers with 20 points on 3-of-5 three-point shooting, Thomas Walkup tallied 18 points and 5 assists and Rokas Jokubaitis added 10 points. Nemanja Nedovic scored 17 points and Ben Bentil 13 for Panathinaikos in defeat.
Apr 06, 2021 by Euroleague.net Print
The 34th and final full round of the Turkish Airlines EuroLeague Regular Season offers six games on Thursday and Friday that will impact which teams fill two open playoff spots and which other one get all-important home-court advantage in the next phase.
Three games in particular influence how the remaining two playoff spots will be filled: Fenerbahce Beko Istanbul vs. Real Madrid and Valencia Basket vs. TD Systems Baskonia Vitoria-Gazteiz on Thursday, tiping off 1 hour and 15 minutes apart, respectively, and Zenit St Petersburg vs. Maccabi Playtika Tel Aviv on Friday.
Real (19-14) has the simplest path to the playoffs, with a victory over already-qualified Fenerbahce (20-13) or with a loss by Zenit (18-14).
Apr 06, 2021 by Javier Gancedo, Euroleague.net Print
The Turkish Airlines EuroLeague Regular Season faces its final round with a lot of questions left to be answered. Mainly, four teams – Real Madrid, Zenit St Petersburg, TD Systems Baskonia Vitoria-Gasteiz, and Valencia Basket – are still fighting for the two playoff spots available. Three other teams, already into the next phase – AX Armani Exchange Milan, Fenerbahce Beko Istanbul and FC Bayern Munich – still have chances to get the home-court advantage in their series, joining FC Barcelona, CSKA Moscow and Anadolu Efes Istanbul in that privileged situation. Only CSKA and Efes were able to win both games in last week s double round, but maybe the biggest winner was FC Bayern Munich, which qualified to the playoffs for the first time by downing Zalgiris Kaunas on late free throws and a last-second block by Vladimir Lucic.
Apr 05, 2021 by Euroleague.net Print
The incredibly competitive nature of the Turkish Airlines EuroLeague Regular Season is underlined by the fact that several playoff qualification matters still have to be settled as we head into the final round of the regular season. Here is your quick guide to Round 34.
Zenit controlling its destiny
With six of the eight playoffs places already taken, four teams â Real Madrid, Zenit St Petersburg, TD System Baskonia Vitoria-Gasteiz and Valencia Basket â are competing for the remaining two slots. One of the teams controlling its own destiny is Zenit (18-14), which has two remaining home games against Maccabi Playtika Tel Aviv (13-19) on Friday and Panathinaikos OPAP Athens (11-20) next Monday. The Russian team knows that if it wins both those games, it will definitely qualify for the playoffs, placed anywhere between sixth and eighth depending on other results.
Moses opened the scoring for Spartak Moscow in the 23rd minute but the lead did not last long as Pavel Maslov s own goal drew the teams level four minutes later.
A few minutes later, Georgi Makhatadze turned the game around for Rostov with his goal in the 32nd minute.
Just before the half-time break, Alexander Sobolev scored an equaliser which means they went into the break on level terms.
After the restart, Sobolev grabbed his second goal of the evening in the 58th minute which turned out to be the match-winning strike for the visitors.
Moses was in action for 90 minutes but he did not finish the game as he was replaced in stoppage-time by Andrey Eshchenko.