Zalgiris edges Barca in front of sellout crowd 13
Zalgiris Kaunas completed a perfect double-round week in the Turkish Airlines EuroLeague by downing FC Barcelona 73-72 in front of a sellout crowd at Zalgirio Arena. Zalgiris and Barca both now have 2-2 records.
Zalgiris won in a game that came down to the final shot, which was missed by Tomas Satoransky at the buzzer.
Keenan Evans led the winners with 18 points and Edgaras Ulanovas and Rolands Smits each added 15 for Zalgiris.
Jan Vesely paced Barca with 12 points. Satoransky, Cory Higgins and Rokas Jokubaitis each had 10 for the guests.
Ulanovas stepped up early and Smits made back-to-back three-pointers for a 16-10 Zalgiris lead. Barca improved its defense off a timeout and Jokubaitis’s triple brought the guests within 20-19 after 10 minutes. Smits and Ulanovas kept pacing the hosts and Evans’s four-point play boosted Zalgiris’s margin to 44-35 at halftime.
Smits took it to double digits, 48-37, soon after the break. Barca found a go-to guy in Higgins, who had 10 points in a 2-14 run that gave Barca the lead, 50-51. Jokubaitis hit a jumper to fix the score at 55-56 after 30 minutes. Nikola Kalinic gave his team a 69-70 lead with 2 minutes left. Arnas Butkevicius hit a critical three-pointer and even though Zalgiris did not trail after that, Higgins got a steal that gave Barca the game’s final possession in which Satoransky missed a mid-range shot at the buzzer.
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