Zaragoza, Mar 4 (EFE).- An inspired Casademont Zaragoza put on his superhero costume again and, just as he did with Real Madrid in the first round, defeated a Barça team that had a winning streak of ten consecutive games (85 -83).
The victory means a moral boost for the ‘rojillo’ team due to the entity of the rival, who arrived in the Aragonese capital as a co-leader of the competition and after two victories in the Euroleague, but above all it is one of those victories that is not counted early in the season and could be worth his weight in gold to achieve permanence.
Almost everything went well for Porfirio Fisac’s team, especially in the first half, against an opponent who was clueless in many phases of the match, possibly because he had his head in the Euroleague games next week against Olympiacos and Fenerbahce, and who was seen forced to try to overcome a maximum disadvantage of up to 25 points for which they lost in the 22nd minute.
The ‘rojillos’ coach had warned before the match that if the Catalan team gave them an opportunity they should take advantage of it. No sooner said than done.
Barça, without Mirotic, was not able to impose its authority and the Maño team believed that they could win from the beginning, the almighty Barça team went to the beards that reacted too late and Casademont Zaragoza ended up achieving a triumph of great merit and with incalculable value for permanence.
The first quarter was marked by the temporary suspension of the match due to a problem on the video scoreboard console when five minutes had gone by with a result of 6-4 and which kept the players standing still for 40 minutes.
This break in the game suited the owners of the field better with Howard Sant-Roos and the very young Aday Mara as protagonists. With 9 points for the first and 7 for the second, they capitalized on the ‘rojillo’ attack to finish the first quarter with 7 points of rent (19-12) against a very unsuccessful Barça in shooting.
The tone did not change in the second quarter with a team unleashed and accurate in attack and that created tremendous problems for the Catalans with a great defense.
Such was the case that the distance in the electronic game gradually increased until reaching the maximum coinciding with the break, 22 points (46-24), thanks to a choral game from Zaragoza with a huge 63% accuracy in field goals in this second set against 18% (3 of 17) of Sarunas Jasikevicius’s team.
The confusion in the first part of those from Barcelona reached such a point that the best valued player, Nico Laprovittola, only valued 6 credits, having up to five players with a negative evaluation. Also, in the +- all the players were negative.
When they returned from the changing rooms, a more aggressive Barça in attack and defense was expected and this was confirmed. With Laprovittola as the offensive banner, he managed to reduce the local advantage to 16 points (57-41) in just three half minutes, but Casademont held on until the end of this quarter, when he was 15 up, despite the great success in the three-pointers of his rival (6 of 9).
With the Barcelona team trying to score quickly and the man from Zaragoza stretching his possessions, the difference began to decrease to 9 points (75-66) with 3.56 to go, putting fear into the body of Porfirio Fisac’s team who saw how With 20 seconds to go, the advantage was four points (80-76).
Barça resorted to fouls to try to avoid defeat but the owners of the ground were calm and ended up taking the victory
– Datasheet:
85 – Casademont Zaragoza (19+27+23+16): Wright (2), Sant-Roos (21), Yusta (11), Cruz (11), Hlinason (9) – starting five – Jessup (7), Mara (13), Nguirane (2), Simanic (7), Jovic (2) and Flores (-).
83 – Barça (12+12+30+29): Laprovittola (28), Satoransky (7), Abrines (7), Vesely (12), Sanli (-) -starting five- Sergi Martínez (-), Kalinic (15 ), Tobey (3), Kuric (7), Jokubaitis (4) and Nnaji (-).
Referees: Pérez Pérez, Oyón and Cristóbal Sánchez. They excluded Vesely (m.40), Hlinason (m.40) and Abrines (m.40) for personal reasons
Incidents: match corresponding to day 21 of the League played in the Príncipe Felipe de Zaragoza pavilion before 6,856 spectators. The match had to be interrupted for 40 minutes after 5 minutes had been played due to a problem with the video scoreboard console. The youth player Miguel Flores made his debut with Casademont Zaragoza.