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Team Kaunas “Žalgiris” have not lost a single match during the first four rounds of the Euroleague and have a great chance to extend their streak as they will play in their arena on Thursday.
On this occasion, the Valencia Valencia team will visit Nemunas Island, which has 2 wins and 1 failure. The people of Žalgiris are laying the foundations of their victories with their good work on defense – of the teams that played four games, they are in second place in terms of lost points – 69.8 during the match. Fenerbahce Istanbul allowed their opponents to score just 1 more point.
Kaunas also shines in attack: they score 79 points each and, according to this indicator, share 3-5 positions with Maccabi Tel Aviv and Piraeus Olympiacos. Valencia, for its part, is only in 15th place with 74.7 points.
Jaume Ponsarnau’s students started the season with a tough 65:63 victory against ASVEL in Vilerban, then they faced Real Madrid without problems (93:77), and last week 66:71 they did not beat the Barça defense at home. Valencia is experiencing a poor stretch in the Spanish league, where they have lost the last two games, with Real Betis de Sevilla landing 85:95 and kneeling at home against Unicaja de Málaga on October 66. With 2 wins and 3 failures, Valencia is currently in 13th place and that is not the result that can be expected from this team.
Valencia will have 9 days before the game with Žalgiris without training, which is very unusual for Euroleague clubs, as they did not have a game on the home front during the weekend. This leaves a factor so unexpected that perhaps the competitors have prepared one or another innovation, that it has not yet caught the attention of the Žalgiris scouts.
During the match played so far, Valencia does not leave any question mark: Bojanas Dubljevičius continues to lead the team. The Montenegrin manages to score 14.3 points in 21 minutes, bounce 5 balls and score 16 utility points. A lot of work awaits the Žalgiris centers closer and closer to the basket. Tall against Real scored 6 points out of 9 and reminded that they can not only accumulate points below the basket. So far, B. Dubjevičius remains the Valencia player who has scored the most long shots: 7 of 14 (50 percent). Louis Labeyrie (3/6) and Derrick Williams (3/6) made 3 shots from the perimeter. We won’t see many far-off bombs on Thursday as Žalgiris is last in 3-point shots (21 per game) and Valencia share 12-13 places (23 per game).
Here again we can remember last season when L. Labeyrie scored 4 of 5 points in Kaunas and became a complete “X factor”. The French scored a total of 12 points from three points from 37 attempts (32.4%) in 28 games. So far L. Labeyrie (19 min, 5.3 points, 5.7 rebounds, 10 rebounds) is doing a lot of invisible work – Valencia has the best overall “defense / offense” on the field. rating – even more 39.8.
Mike Tobey, a short distance player, is still the substitute for B. Dubljevičius. scores 8.5 points, bounces 3.3 points and scores 6.3 utility points. Fast and mobile center players are constantly trying to take advantage of two-on-two situations. It is true that the American usually has problems with fouls, as we have seen in Madrid, when he broke the rules 4 times in 21 minutes. Valencia did something of a cleanup at the heavyweight forward position, having last year not only Labeyrie but also Brock Motum and Maurice Ndour. Instead of these two players, a capable athlete, D. Williams, was bought. The American is highly motivated to appear after the blank season at Fenerbahche in Istanbul, but he continues to slide: 9.7 points, 3 rebounds and 9 utility points in 20 minutes. It is clear that Williams does not find a place in the attack schemes, since he has thrown just 20 shots in 61 minutes, of which he hit 12.
The new Nikola Kaliničius spends more time on the field: 26 minutes each. In general, J.Ponsarnau remains true to himself and very often broken in his lineup: no one in the top ten plays for 14 minutes and 26 more minutes. N. Kaliničius is very important for Valencia’s defense: with him, 84 points are spent on 100 attacks on the field, which is the third best result for the team.
It is N. Kaliničius who can become an important figure against “Žalgiris”, who does not have a true light forward and in this position the attacking defender Marius Grigonis plays more, and is replaced by Artūras Milaknis, whose strong side is far from being. a defense against such “third numbers”. N. Kaliničius himself is shooting 3-pointers beyond the country (2/8), but bases his game on actions closer to the basket, allowing him to score 9.7 points during the match. Coming off the bench, Fernando San Emeterio, 36, also benefits: he manages to score 6 points in 14 minutes.
Klemenas Prepeličius started 2 of the 3 games in the attacking defender’s position. Joan Sastre, who started in the first meeting with ASVEL, suffered a serious injury and was removed from the line-up for a long time. Slovenia averages 6.3 points, 3.7 assists and 8.3 utility points every 21 minutes. The three-point defender was only 1-for-7. He also has foul trouble, racking up 3 fouls twice in 21 minutes. K.Prepeličius is still an extremely dangerous player, who can throw 6 or 7 long shots into opponents’ basket in separate matches.
So far, the biggest disappointment is considered to have been Martin Hermannsson, who came from the ranks of ALBA in Berlin. Iceland scores just 4 points in 17 minutes, makes 2.7 assists and scores 2.3 points. This defender was expected to take the place of the five starters, but that did not happen and he has to get off the bench. Hermannsson made only 4 shots of 16 attempts, including the 4 missed triples.
Guillem Vives, who plays in the starting five, and veteran Sam Van Rossom share responsibility for organizing the attacks. Interestingly, the time that both players spend on the floor differs only by 5 seconds, 18 minutes. 41 sec. 18 minutes and 35 seconds ago The average score is slightly higher for Spanish (5.3 compared to 5), and the efficiency collected is identical with 6.7. Belges dispenses more assists (2.3 vs 1.3), but G. Vives takes the ball perfectly – 1.7 per game, which is the team’s best result.
Outside the rotation is the young Jaime Pradilla, who played just two minutes in two games, and after the injury, the Serbian Vanja Marinkovičius, who already played in the last game and hit 1 triple of 3 attempts, recovers in 6 minutes. This 23-year-old defender will definitely have his chances as he brings more energy and aggressiveness to the game, which is a lot like J. Ponsarnau.
Valencia remains true to itself and continues to be a team that works intensely on defense and shows a high rate of attack. Every player who appears on the parquet has to give up all his energy and not save, as it is often rotated and this allows him to make the powerful replacement benches available. Longer pitches are still the biggest reserve as they hit poorly, although there is certainly no shortage of dangerous perimeter players. The situations that arise are not really bad, so sooner or later the pitches should start to cut the net.
The Valencian team continues to slide, but at this point in the season there are no problems with either the coronavirus or the injuries that plagued the season, so it is well prepared to challenge Žalgiris. We will see how we manage to do this already this Thursday from 20 hours.
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