ACB Day 21
Barca
Valencia basket
Nicolás Laprovittola had the tie in hand with the last shot “because we made a serious mistake,” Mumbrú stressed, but the Argentine player missed when the red lights on the board were already on, and the Valencia Basket players took a breath . After an inspired second half, combative defense and successful shots, the orange team won the game against Barcelona in Palau.
The local team made the mistake of relaxing in the crucial moments when they felt their breakthrough and ended up paying for it with Zaragoza's Jaime Pradilla, who played a great, intense and committed game when it was his turn Pressure on the Blaugrana players in defense. , and casual in attack, with 15 points at the end and a few baskets that were decisive for the final result. All this, with four people threatening him since the start of the last quarter.
The game started violently, somewhat tiringly, with several throwing errors by both teams. Valencia missed eight of its first nine three-point attempts and only managed to score from under the basket. Barcelona loosened up a bit at the beginning, although their rivals always came out of the defense, so the first ten minutes ended in a draw (19:19).
But Barça broke away at the start of the second quarter, forcing Mumbrú to take both of his timeouts immediately. Valencia's imbalances put Barcelona's maximum lead (40-31) on the scoreboard a minute before half-time, but all the stars came together so that the difference was reduced almost to a minimum, with a devastating part of 0-5, and an unsportsmanlike performance by Laprovittola, who didn't have his best afternoon after losing the ball in the final attack with eight seconds left, so the halftime result (40-38) was not as disastrous for Valencia as it seemed. predicted a minute earlier.
Barça still tried to break away at the start of the second half, with Brizuela as the protagonist, but Valencia resisted in defense, with Jovic as a beacon and the increasingly overwhelming presence of Semi Ojeleye, who was intimidating with his 109 kilos of weight. He became the Nightmare of the Barcelona Five. After a 0:19 run and a three-pointer from Robertson, Valencia took the lead (58:63) at the end of the third quarter and never lost its footing in the game again.
In the final quarter, Ojeleye and Pradilla's show continued, as did their team's rebounding efficiency, which secured almost all of the loose balls in the final quarter.
The tension came when Valencia was in control after losing the ball and later as time expired on the penultimate attack, but the battle between the boards was fierce and the score (76-79) was unclear. He moved more, partly because Laprovittola didn't hit the last three-pointer.
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