Caja Laboral beat Fenerbahce Ulker 90-85 in an overtime thriller- Euroleague Recap
Caja Laboral seem to have some sort of psychological advantage over Fenerbahce Ulker.
They beat them in their opener of Turkish Airlines Euroleague 2011 in a close encounter and on Thursday night they edged past them 90-85 in yet another thriller.
Extra time was needed on the night to decide the winner. Laboral were ahead 73-69 with just a minute remaining in the game however four timely free throws by Ulker levelled it at 73 all and game travelled into overtime.
Caja utilized the overtime more efficiently and pulled away right at the start to seal the result in their favour.
Scoring machine, Fernando San Emeterio marshalled Laboral with 25 points including 3 for 4 from outside the arc and an accurate 6 for 6 from the free throw line. Milko Bjelica scored 16 points and forced 7 rebounds while Brad Oleson
finished with 13 on 3 for 6 from the three-point range. Mirza Teletovic (12) and Pablo Prigioni (11) were the other two players from Caja who ended with tallies in double figures.
Bojan Bogdanovic scored 19 points and pulled down 6 rebounds for Ulker. Oguz Savas added 14 whereas Thabo Sefolosha and Curtis Jerrells both finished with 13 points each.
Nemanja Bjelica and Kevin Seraphin lifted two jumpers to provide Caja an early 4-0 lead. However it was answered immediately with three free throws from Omer Onan and a layup from Gasper Vidmar. Caja later reeled off a 7-3 spurt
to take their lead to 14-8 but failed to score quickly in last few minutes of the quarter whereas on the other hand, Fenerbahce kept on chipping with points to cut the lead to 16-14 by the end of the quarter.
Caja’s defence held Ulker to only 5 points earlier in the second quarter whereas their offense kept on penetrating the defences of the opponents to make it 26-19 in the favour of Caja. However next few minutes belonged to Ulker
as they came from behind and not only slashed the deficit but by the end of quarter, found themselves ahead 42-38.
Ulker managed to maintain the lead throughout the third quarter and despite a good fight by Caja, they found themselves trailing behind 60-54 by the end of quarter.
The last quarter turned out to be a three-point fest.
Both teams started with a downtown to make it 63-57. Prigioni and Fernando drilled two more to make it 63 all and send the crowds in frenzy. Ulker could not quite find the baskets in next few minutes whereas completing an outstanding
17-5 run; Laboral got ahead 71-65. From there on the game turned into a battle.
Ulker won the first half of the battle by coming from behind and levelling it at 73, however Laboral had the last laugh as they dominated in the extra time and won the game by 90-85.
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