Lauvergne, who showed a different face: “Maybe 3s need to be shot more often?” / News

We know perfectly well that Joffrey Lauvergne can jump high. On Tuesday, at the Žalgiris Arena, he showed that he could do much more.

The tall Kaunas player “Žalgiris” in the second half of the match with Vilerbanas ASVEL scored 16 points and played probably the best match of the season, when the statistics in the protocol reflected a great contribution to the victory.

His performance helped end a series of six straight wins at ASVEL and at the same time kept Žalgiris in contention for relegation.

“Once you lose, you will be fifteenth, once you win, third. I am clearly exaggerating here, but I am very happy with the victory,” Lauvergne said after the duel.

Until the long break, he played just 8.5 minutes. and threw the bag only twice. It seemed that it would be his typical match when he faces great midfielders like Moustapha Fallas, Yousoupha Fallas, Walter Tavares or Nikola Milutinov. This impression was reinforced by the resulting block at the beginning of the third quarter.

Still, Lauvergne soon began to show his other side. Initially, he defeated Fall one-on-one and scored two points with a foul, and soon brought on the third foul from this 218cm tall giant, forcing him to sit on a bench.

After taking his best player out of the game, Lauvergne soon scrambled over the bow twice and powerfully hit Rock Jokubaitis balls.

A couple of minutes later Lauvergne found himself free at the three-point line, Jokubaitis doubted whether it was worth giving him the ball, but in the end it passed and the Frenchman scored a triple, only the second goal of the season. in the Euroleague.

“I don’t shoot a lot of 3s, but if I’m free, I can shoot. Maybe I need to quit more often? Lauvergne smiled after the duel.” No, I’m kidding, we have enough guys to shoot really well.

One of them is Marius Grigonis. His first long pitch early in the game didn’t even touch the goal, but then Grigonis made 5 3-of-6s and with 21 points he was the most productive at “Žalgiris”.

“It was a very important match,” Grigonis said in the “Žalgiris TV” dressing room. “They had a good section, it’s fun that we broke the game, Luke recovered, he prevailed, a lot of fun.”

The teammate mentioned by Grigonis scored 6 points, all of them – during probably the most important stretch of the match, when at the end of the third quarter and at the beginning of the fourth he made three colonies in a row and Kaunas’ lead saved until 69:57.

“Žalgiris” scored 45 points after a long break, but the work on defense was just as important, where 33 points were missed. This was also highlighted by coach Martin Schiller after the duel.

“The main reason for the victory was defense, we were very active, we hit the ball 21 times, we took 8 balls,” Schiller said at the press conference. – Show how we push them. We do well in Fall on defense. Jojo and Martin Geben did a great job and prevented him from catching the ball. We also gave Howard a break, who’s been in really good shape lately.

It was probably the strongest performance by “Žalgiris” on both sides of the pitch during the last five Euroleague games. Having previously not exceeded the 75-point limit four times in a row and stumbled three times, this time the people of Žalgiris received quite solid performances on both sides of the square.

ASVEL’s attacking engine Norris Cole scored 9 points in the first half, but was left with just 5 points for the remainder of the match, mainly overseen by Thomas Walkup.

Walkup, who missed the LKL game over the weekend due to an ankle injury, played the most for the team – 32 minutes.

Paulius Jankūnas shone under the baskets in Kaunas, grabbing 9 balls, 5 of them in attack. Both figures are the best for him in the Euroleague this season.

In attack, “Žalgiris” got a sip of fresh air from Rokas Jokubaitis, who scored 10 points and 5 assists, and his performance in the third half was one of the team’s brightest.

He scored points and caused fouls, and eventually booth balls for Lauvergne’s firings.

It was a completely different picture from the previous four games, when they scored 12 points together and hit 5 shots out of 15.

“That section was really not very nice to me, the coaches or, I think, the fans,” Jokubaitis said at the press conference. – The coaches gave a lot of time to play, but they failed to do anything impressive on the field.

Inside, he didn’t know where to put it because he really needed a match like that. Both psychologically and to raise my mouth for me and my colleagues. I am very excited for the team and for my performance, my losing streak of matches came to an end. I hope the curve goes up by the end of the season. “

The duo of Jokubaitis and Lauvergne was singled out by Schiller after the duel.

“Combination of Rocco and JoJo pikenrole allowed Lauvergne to accelerate, said the “Žalgiris” coach. – They did a great job and a good game in attack fired up Jojo and defense. In the first half, Lauvergne didn’t play much, because I think Geben also played a great game. “

Kicking off the last game in Madrid for the first time on the bench, Lauvergne played perhaps the worst game of the season in the Spanish capital, but recovered in a duel with ASVEL.

Does that mean you found new weapons while playing taller opponents?

“I’ve played fourth instead of fifth in my career, I’m used to taking advantage of my physical advantage and sometimes it’s not easy to play with bigger guys,” Lauvergne admitted. – But I’m faster and I have my strengths against those guys, you just have to use it. I am gaining experience and I think I am finding ways to improve. “

Only better for Žalgiris.

After this victory, Kaunas Club climbed to ninth place in the standings, having the same number of victories with the previous position, but less in the match at Fenerbahche in Istanbul.