Maccabi Electra Tel Aviv squeak past Partizan MT: S 70-66: Euroleague Recap
Maccabi Electra Tel Aviv, after tasting defeat at the hands of Emporio Armani in their opener of Turkish Airlines Euroleague 2011, made a strong comeback this Thursday as they convincingly overcame the Serbian champs, Partizan
MT: S 70-66.
Maccabi were always in the driving seat and trailed only once throughout the game.
Players from Partizan put a decent effort but there were few who looked totally off colour and were completely ineffective in the court such as Miroslav Raduljica and Marko Cakarevic who ended with scores of 3 and 4 respectively.
Had they performed slightly better, result might have been in the favour of Partizan.
Dragan Milosavljevic and Milan Macvan were the most outstanding players from Partizan scoring 14 points each along with 5 and 6 rebounds respectively. Acie Law chipped in with 12 while Nikola Pekovic added another 11 to the tally.
Theodoros Papaloukas and Jordan Farmar were the two most prominent players from Maccabi scoring 13 and 11 points respectively. Lior Eliyahu and Guy Pnini were also impressive and added 10 points each.
A confident Jordan Farmar thrilled with the win expressed his delight saying
"We played well for three quarters. Defensively we were locked in and into it. You have to give them credit, they fought and played to the end, but we can do things better -- we can rebound better and share the ball a little better
-- and we will as we go along."
Farmar scored first points of the game through a layup that was neutralized by Milan Macvan’s two- pointer in the preceding minute. First 8 minutes of the games were pretty competitive as both teams displayed strong defense and
held up either from scoring. Scores were level at 12 but a three-pointer from Guy Pnini changed the whole scenario and all of a sudden, Partizan found themselves trailing by 7 points at the end of the quarter 19-12.
Partizan’s scoring rate in the second quarter improved significantly but at the same time, Maccabi got better too. The lead of first quarter only extended with time. A three pointer at the end of 1st half guy Pnini got
his team 12 points ahead of Partizan going into the second half 41-29.
A simple layup in the third quarter by Papaloukas got Partizan 16 points ahead. Lead just kept on growing with free throws and shots from the field. Points dried out in the latter half of third quarter for both teams. Partizan
only managed to score 4 points in the last 6 minutes whereas Maccabi scored 7 but Maccabi already had a lead so they went into the last quarter oozing with confidence.
Partizan started well with both Macvan and Katic scoring from inside the paint. However the pressure of the lead never allowed Partizan to get back in the game. They kept chipping in with runs but never got close to Maccabi and
despite a 5 point run in the end; they fell 4 points short and lost the game.
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