Red alarm duel between Zalgiris and Baskonia
BARCELONA, 1 Dic. (EUROPA PRESS) –
Bitci Baskonia visit Zalgiris this Thursday at the Zalgirio Arena in Kaunas (7:00 p.m.), on matchday 13 of the Euroleague Regular Phase, in an emergency and red alarm duel between two teams in bad dynamics that need victory.
The Baskonians, who seemed to have seen the light with the victory against Red Star and the relief on the bench with the arrival of Neven Spahija, have lost to CSKA Moscow and Real Madrid and fell back to fourth place by the tail.
Worse is the Zalgiris, unknown after being one of the positive surprises in recent seasons and which is now bottom. Only two victories in ten games although, yes, recent. They come from losing to Barça (96-73), but previously they had beaten Panathinaikos and Fenerbahçe.
At home, Zalgiris is usually better, who also changed coaches looking for a new direction. The urgencies are on both sides and in Baskonia they hope to be inspired as they did in the three victories of the last four visits to Kaunas.
Rokas Giedraitis, with an average of 12.3 points, and Baldwin IV with an average of 11.3 points, are the fittest players in the Vitoria team. But Spahija cares more that his players stop allowing “cheap baskets” and can react. “I am not a loss coach,” he stressed in the previous one.
Up front, despite not being at his best, they will have an ex-Baskonista like Zoran Dragic, who has played only five games with 6.6 points per game. If he plays and gets inspired, they should stop him, just like a Janis Strelnieks who is the Lithuanian leading scorer, with 9.6 points on average.
DATASHEET.
–EQUIPMENT.
ZALGIRIS KAUNAS: Strelnieks, Kalnietis, Dragic, Cavanaugh y Blazevic –posible quinteto inicial–; Webster, Lekavicius, Nebo, Miniotas, Lukosiunas, Milaknis, Ulanov.
BITCI BASKONIA: Granger, Baldwin IV, Sedekerskis, Giedraitis and Enoch -possible starting quintet-; Peters, Barrera, Marinkovic, Fontecchio, Costello, Nnoko, Kurucs.
– REFEREES: Ryzhyk, Koromilas and Dragojevic.
– PAVILION: Zalgirio Arena.