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The Kaunas team “Žalgiris” achieved the fifth victory in the Euroleague, defeating the basketball players of Vilerbanas ASVEL in the 83:74 distance. The Krepsinis.net portal offers the most interesting aspects of the duel.
Party with the dog “Rytu” from Vilnius. ASVEL started the game without feeling any pressure, as it did not have the main players on the defensive circuit and was practically without playing training for almost three weeks, so he stepped on the floor only to give up and that initial play in a good mood. It really paid off: start 9: 3. Meanwhile, “Žalgiris” slipped again and this can already be seen this season for the first time, when there were 7 missed shots in a row and another error, and the rivals managed to escape. As in the first half of the match with Vilnius “Rytas”, this time the French club gained a double-digit lead and surpassed the people of Žalgiris both in terms of start and energy. It seemed that “Žalgiris” was very asleep and the owners accumulated points easily. The confusion of the guests and the cold shower was also demonstrated by the episode, when a player as experienced as Paulius Jankūnas stopped the opponent simply by hugging him, where in such cases a non-sports foul is definitely awarded, for which the captain was sanctioned.
ASVEL offered very tough and physical basketball, and “Žalgiris” did not respond to opponents in such a game. Of course, the brightest figure was Moustapha Fallas. The 218cm tall Frenchman scored 5 points in the first half, but caused 7 fouls, bounced 4 balls in attack, grabbed 2 balls and gave 2 assists. It was difficult to deal with this center on defense, so “Žalgiris” tried and pressed under the baskets, and then hands parted for the ASVEL players who stayed on the perimeter, who shot 6 of 3 points out of 12 in the first half. “Žalgiris” did not eliminate M. Fallo from the match as he did not deliberately attack him in attack, allowing the best player of the match to remain on the field successfully.
Disappointed by the performance of “Žalgiris”, who seemed completely confused against M. Fall – as soon as Augustine Rubit accumulated three fouls and Joffrey Lauvergne – two. The best player was Martin Geben, who did not escape M. Fallo and knew how to play him in attack and represent him well in defense. In the second half, 5 consecutive points from this “fifth edition” allowed “Žalgiris” to cut the deficit to 3 points.
Another important factor was Charles Kahudi, who scored 3 3-pointers of 4. This player can hit, but has only scored as many long shots in every game last season as this time in the middle of the game – 4.
Changes after a break. “Žalgiris” again broke the match in his favor in the third quarter, as happened in the match with “Rytas”. Here again, we can rejoice that Martin Schiller put the right accents in the wardrobe. It is obvious that the Žalgiris had to improve their defense, as ASVEL was allowed to shoot up to 50 points, which is far from being a very talented team in attack.
During the first 1 min. and 42 sec. ASVEL scored 4 points and in the remaining 8 minutes. and 18 sec. – 6. Impressively, “Žalgiris” managed to stop the opponents. First of all, Kaunas began to respond to opponents on the level of physicality and contact. M. Fallas had to work much harder to get the ball closer to the basket than in the first half, when the ball moved him too easily to the positions where he felt better. ASVEL basketball players started to get stuck on defense without finding a comfortable shot, using the lead wire, losing the ball, or committing a foul on offense. Even more impressive seems to be that ASVEL scored just 2 “offside” points in the third half and the remaining 8 were scored by free throws. In all, up to 12 attacks were “empty”.
“Žalgiris” finally began to use that weapon, which was very important in many meetings held before, began to tear down the defense of opponents in raids. This was necessary when ASVEL started swapping defenses, and players as fast as Lukas Lekavičius or Marius Grigonis were able to beat opponents “one on one” perfectly and were allowed to commit fouls. It is true that it can be noted that Žalgiris’ team started to play much more aggressively quite late: less than 3 minutes to go he caused 3 fouls in an attack. Elwin Ndjock, 19, managed to collect 3 fouls in less than 2 minutes to take advantage of his limit, which eliminated the Euroleague rookie from the game.
In the latter half, ASVEL had a lot of trouble with their attack again and in the episodes it was obvious that players were short of their strength when they didn’t follow opponents or stayed on the brink of attack to at least get a breather. The French team played a rotation of 7 players who played from 22 to 33 minutes. E.Ndjockas played 7 minutes and Kevarrius Hayesas accumulated 4 fouls in 6 minutes (-4 points) and obviously they were not physically prepared for this match as they lost the entire duel both in defense and attack.
When the reserves of the rival forces followed, the people of Žalgiris had just put an extra gear on and, after 29 minutes on the parquet, M.Grigonis and L.Lekavičius became the players who helped finally break through ASVEL’s resistance. . It was these players who scored 13 of the team’s 26 points, and L. Lekavičius’s colón with a foul and then a difficult 3-pointer allowed to change the situation from -1 to plus 5. The opponents were finished off at the beginning of the last second by the great advance of M. Grigonis and the colon with a foul, which allowed to take 6 points. points. It can be noted that M. Grigonis was unique not only in attacking, but also in defending.
Thomas Walkup worked a lot on the attack, but did a lot of work. The player scored 11 points, grabbed 7 balls and made up to 7 assists, obtaining 26 utility points, the latter being the best of his career in the Euroleague. The defender also worked well for his basketball team and posted the best defensive rating on his team.
It is interesting that only J.Lauvergne and Th.Walkupas were the only people from Žalgiris to get a negative indicator “plus / minus” – minus 1. Meanwhile, the highest indicator was recorded by the aforementioned M.Geben and Artūras Milaknis , which was not too divorced – after plus 11. In this case, it can be said that the column “plus / minus” did not really reflect the actual performance of the players.
An unfavorable competitor. On this occasion, it was not only the work of A. Rubit and J. Lauvergne that disappointed, but also the performance of Nigel Hayes, which was out of the ordinary context. The American hit just 1 of 6 pitch and scored 2 points in 24 minutes. The hard edge also made stupid decisions at the end of the duel, when it was necessary to ground the ball and maintain the advantage, he attacked the basket as soon as he received the ball and did so inaccurately. Not only that, he immediately broke the rules unnecessarily and sent the opponent to the penalty line, where Guershon Yabusel hit the first penalty, missed the second and grabbed the ball and 20 seconds later he was able to reduce the deficit to 3 points but fortunately not hit from under the basket. In general, Hayes is very athletic and the other ASVEL team is very unfavorable, as they also performed poorly last season: they scored -2 points in one game and minus 4 in the other. And it was 2 of the 3 games of the season when the American played “less.”
conclusion. It seemed that “Žalgiris” should have easily beaten the opponents, but the bad first part of the match worried all the fans of the team. It is difficult to say what hinders such a poor start to the match: maybe there are bad accents, maybe the start-up or concentration is lacking, but the fact is that at the moment “Žalgiris” is definitely a better team than ASVEL, as we saw in the second part. Vilerban’s team felt free in the game, and “Žalgiris” could be overwhelmed by the favorite tag and the need to win, as opponents returned to the park from the bed of COVID-19 disease. It is gratifying that “Žalgiris” shows character and does not miss even with a deficit of 13 points. In the second half, the Kaunas also showed their defensive potential, and when they began to settle for their basket, they spread their arms and attacked. The aggressive play in the attack allowed to provoke up to 24 fouls and to launch 18 penalties of the same number of possible ones. Žalgiris provoked and launched more fines only against Crvena Zvezda from Belgrade – 25 and 19. Žalgiris won a really useful victory in Vilerbana, to be won in the Euroleague, and the difficulties encountered are not unexpected, as the opponent is physically strong, athletic and tough on defense, which we remember last year when “Žalgiris” exhausted the victory in Vilerban 79:74.
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