Baskonia - Asvel
International - Euroleague, Round 33
The Basketball Expert
In the last round, Baskonia demolished Fenerbahce by 92:69. They continued their way to the Euroleague quarterfinals, but the only guarantee to be there is two wins in the next two rounds. Baskonia need to beat Asvel first, and then go to Piraeus and defeat Olympiacos. In case they win only one game, it will be necessary to have luck with some other results. Vanja Marinkovic played the best game of his career against Fenerbahce with 35 points. Markus Howard has been in a shooting crisis for a while now, but when Marinkovic, Rokas Giedraitis and Matt Costello are scoring from distance, it's hard to slow down Baskonia's offense. In addition to all that, Darius Thompson plays phenomenally and he is the true floor general of this team.
Asvel are in disastrous shape. They lost 11 consecutive games in the Euroleague and are at the very bottom at 8-24. In addition to bad results, this club has been shaken by several things lately. First, Tony Parker gave up on intention to sell his shares due to shareholders pressure. Then, last week, it was announced that Asvel was fined with 100,000 euros and two wins in the domestic championship. The reason is financial fraud with Nando De Colo and Joffrey Lauvergne contracts. When such things happen, it is clear that players focus cannot be directed only to basketball.
Before this game, these two teams are in a completely different situation. For Baskonia, this is a "must win" match and they will do everything they can to have a big advantage already at halftime so that they don't fear until the very end. On the other hand, Asvel comes without any ambition. They had an exhausting game against Le Mans in the domestic championship on Tuesday night and it can easily happen that some important players such as De Colo don’t play at all in Vitoria. Often head coach T.J. Parker rested the players recently in the Euroleague, so they traveled to Piraeus with only nine players. Under such circumstances, we expect Baskonia to achieve a routine double-digit win here.
Pistol Pete
Third victory in a row in the Euroleague, tonight against the French ASVEL, is the only way for Baskonia to maintain a good chance of reaching the quarterfinals.
For the Spanish team, the task is clear, they are aware that the placement among the eight best teams of the continent solely depends on them. On the other hand, ASVEL is not just a team without any result imperative in the Euroleague. Overall, this is also a team that has by far been the least productive this season, and has a more than modest 8-24 record.
Baskonia's results clearly show to what extent the hosts are the favorite in tonight's duel. Baskonia, as the home team in the Euroleague, achieved seven wins in eight matches since mid-December. In each of those games, they scored at least 90 points, which is a fantastic score for a team that, along with Partizan, plays the most attractive attacking basketball in the European elite this season.
Triumphs over Fenerbahce (92:69) and Alba (93:87) last week put the Spanish team back on track. When Baskonia counts on all healthy players, even the best Euroleague teams cannot match the attacking rhythm of the team from Vitoria, especially on their own field.
On the other hand, ASVEL not only has a problem with the quality of individuals and the team as a whole, but also an obvious problem with the motive in the competition. The last time the French club won in the Euroleague was on January 26. Since then, they have been on a streak of 11 European defeats. From the last five games in the Euroleague, ASVEL managed to reduce the defeat to a single-digit difference only once.
This season, Baskonia scores 12.4 more points on average than this rival (86-73.6). The key task for the host will be to speed up the game as soon as possible and impose a recognizable tempo. It will also depend on how quickly the Spanish team will reach a high advantage.
The game of the home team depends a lot on the inspiration of the shooter Markus Howard (14.1 points on average in the Euroleague), and essentially more on the game of Darius Thompson, who is their dominant option in assists (6.5 per match) and in the number of steals (1.7 per match) in the European competition.
Baskonia's key quality lies in the fact that the team has many options for shooting from a distance - for example, the ever-improving Serbian guard Vanja Marinković has a superb 40 percent three-point shooting percentage this season.
ASVEL's game depends almost exclusively on the inspiration of the French veteran, the famous guard Nando De Colo, who is still not as efficient this season (13.6 points and 3.5 assists on average) as in the previous decade, when he made a reputation as one of the most dominant shooters on the continent.
In the first part of the season, ASVEL convincingly celebrated, at the end of October, 87:61 on their home field. Now we should expect a convincing triumph for the hosts, who lead in the head-to-head score 6-5, and who have an ideal opportunity to continue a series of extremely effective editions when they play in Vitoria.