Basketball / Euroleague / One hurdle down, one to go
By Haaretz Sports Staff
Maccabi Tel Aviv wanted to advance to the Euroleague quarterfinals from the first-place spot in Group F, and it did so by defeating Zalgiris Kaunas 80-66 last night at Yad Eliahu, but it will have to get by Barcelona in order to reach the Final Four in Madrid.
Before last night's game, Maccabi Tel Aviv had already clinched a spot in the elite eight, but it did not want to face CSKA Moscow, which finished Group G in first place, in a best-of-three series without home-court advantage before the single-elimination semifinals at a now-neutral site.
Advertisement
"I want to congratulate the players on my team, the management and the dedicated fans for an extraordinary achievement - first place in the Euroleague Top 16 group," were coach Zvika Sherf's first words, spoken with no small amount of exhaustion but also a lot of satisfaction, following last night's convincing victory.
"It was a very difficult group, full of ups and down," he continued. "You should have seen the players' bodies - they were drained from all the effort. Now we have a little more time than usual to prepare for the meeting with Barcelona.
"I haven't yet seen Barcelona in action yet this season, only glancingly on television when we were in Madrid. It's clear that they are not a team of chumps - but now we have to utilize home-court advantage and try to get somewhere - the Euroleague Final Four."
Yotam Halperin, who led Maccabi with 17 points, also acknowledged that the team is unfamiliar with its next opponent.
"We are indeed close to the Euroleague final, but we are still far away from the Final Four," he said."We do not know Barcelona because we really didn't think about it, but I'm sure that the coaches will make sure that we get very familiar [with them], and it's good that we don't have to face CSKA. The guys here are celebrating a little but we have not yet finished our work."
Also last night, in the final games of the Top 16, Final Four host Real Madrid were knocked out, and its bitter rival, Barcelona, advanced.
Olympiacos, which began the Top 16 with two losses, defeated Real Madrid 72-63 and completed a big comeback. Panagiotis Giannakis' club forced one of the most potent offenses in Europe to shoot just 38 percent from the field. Panagiotis Vasilopoulos scored 14 points and Milos Teodosic had 13. Arvydas Macijauskas made a brief return following a long absence due to injury.
Barcelona reached the quarterfinals with a dramatic 64-62 victory over CSKA Moscow. With 2.6 seconds remaining and facing a 64-61 deficit, CSKA's Ramunas Siskauskas hit the first of his two free throws and missed the second. J.R. Holden came down with the offensive rebound, but the officials justifiably blew the whistle for two-sided fouls on the rebound by Barcelona's Fran Vazquez and CSKA's Matjaz Smodis.
CSKA got the final ball and J.R. Holden's three-point attempt hit the rim and bounced away.
Barcelona was 5-for-27 on its three-point attempts and Jaka Lakovic was the only Barcelona player to score in double-digits (14 points), but Barcelona earned the victory with outstanding defense in the final period.
Siskauskas scored 15 points for CSKA.
Eli Shvidler, Vered Cohen and Arie Livnat contributed to this report.
Haaretz.com, the online edition of Haaretz Newspaper in Israel, offers real-time breaking news, opinions and analysis from Israel and the Middle East. Haaretz.com provides extensive and in-depth coverage of Israel, the Jewish World and the Middle East, including defense, diplomacy, the Arab-Israeli conflict, the peace process, Israeli politics, Jerusalem affairs, international relations, Iran, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, the Palestinian Authority, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, the Israeli business world and Jewish life in Israel and the Diaspora.
