Mirza Teletovic fails to inspire Caja Laboral; Lose 71-68 to Bennet Cantu: Euroleague Recap Part-1
The Group A of the Turkish Airlines Euroleague 2011 has by far been the most exciting. With no dominant leader as yet, it seems that the last four teams will be decided on points differential.
Bennet Cantu has now made it even more exciting by joining the two other teams placed at top after beating Caja Laboral 71-68 in a cliff hanger played on Thursday night.
Caja started outstandingly and dominated the first and major part of second quarter. Coming from behind however, Cantu exhibited superb offense and not only managed to slash the lead but changed the momentum completely to their
side. With time, they took the game completely away from Laboral as the lead reached almost 20 points at one instance in the last frame.
But a twist in tale was in the waiting.
Laboral created panic in the Cantu ranks by reeling off a magnificent 25-7 run in the last few minutes to get as close as 69-68 with less than a minute remaining.
Unfortunately for them though, they failed to finish it off to complete a memorable win.
Laboral’s head coach, Dusko Ivanovic, naturally wasn’t too satisfied with his team’s performance and accepted his team underperformed for most of the time in the court. He added
“We started the match in the right way, but in the second and in the third quarter our defense was very bad and we permitted to Cantu to take a big advantage. In the last minutes we fought for the victory, but, honestly, we played
bad in many moments of this game."
His counterpart Andrea Trinchieri was all smiles and praising the team for pulling off a win against a good team, added
“It was an amazing night with a great atmosphere and a palace full of people. The key to our victory was our defense; we permitted to Caja to score only 6 points in the third quarter."
Gianluca Basile paced Cantu with 18 points while , Nicolas Mazzarino, the second top scorer from the side, finished with 14 on a 3 for 3 shooting from downtown and 3 for 4 from the charity stripe.
Tags: