The fifth round of the EuroLeague regular season requires Olimpia to make its fourth road game, this time in Barcelona against one of the big contenders, the only one with Efes to have made both of the last two Final Fours. Barcelona is 2-2 this season, it lost at home to unbeaten Olympiacos but made up for it by winning in Munich two days before Olimpia did. The team is coming from a painful defeat in Kaunas where, however, it had the possession to win the game at the end but didn’t take advantage of it. So far, Barcelona has shot well from three (40.2 percent) and two (55.0 percent, fourth overall), has excellent defensive numbers so the figures overall indicate a much better team than the current record shows, as is conceivable considering the roster and despite the absences (Nikola Mirotic, Kyle Kuric, Sergi Martinez). Milan has played all close games so far: it has lost one, in overtime against Alba. Over the last week, it reduced the number of turnovers, 29 in the first two games, 18, nine each, in the next two. In the three-point shooting it went up to 38 percent. Kevin Pangos is coming from an 11-assist outing in Munich to ignite the inside game of Brandon Davies, Kyle Hines and also Nicolò Melli, 41 points scored combined by them. Of course, Barcelona is the most formidable opponents among those faced so far. At home, Barca is 39-10 over the past four seasons. Last year it lost only twice at home, once with Milan. For Olimpia, veteran Gigi Datome is now available in the EuroLeague, but Shavon Shields will not be on the court just like Naz Mitrou-Long and Tommaso Baldasso. Tip-off time is 20:30 on Friday, 28th October.
COACH ETTORE MESSINA – “Any game against a great team like Barcelona requires focus at the highest level and extreme attention to details. Moving the ball against their aggressive full-court defense will be a crucial aspect, just like our defense against their low-post game, both with the guards and the bigs, and against their big men when cutting toward the high post. I’m expecting a very tough game, as always when you go play in Palau.”
BRANDON DAVIES – “I have great memories of my years in Barcelona, I’m excited to be back in what was my home away from home for a while and play in Palau, this time on the opposite side. It will be a difficult game, we come off two road wins, but this is a test against a team very disciplined, who plays the right way. The two games we won on the road last week were won in different ways, but with a lot of toughness. It takes a lot of toughness to win on the road and even more in Barcelona.”
NICOLO’ MELLI – “We played some solid teams so far; we played three games out of four on the road and the only home game was against the hottest team in the EuroLeague so far. Barcelona is without Nikola Mirotic, it is a huge absence, but they are still a championship contending team. We are missing some players too; everybody will try to give something more to the team in order to help. If I look at what kind of the team they are and which kind of team we are, I expect a physical game that will be decided by the defenses.”
BARCELONA – Barcelona have played the Final Four in each of the last two seasons, losing the final game in 2021 in Cologne and the semi-final in 2022 in Belgrade. For the third straight year, the coach is Sarunas Jasikevicius. Compared to last season, there are many elements of the core group that are returning, namely Cory Higgins, Nicolas Laprovittola, Kyle Kuric (so far not available due to an injury, just like Sergi Martinez), Alex Abrines, Sertac Sanli, who won the EuroLeague when he was playing for Efes and defeated Barcelona in the championship game, and Rokas Jokubaitis, a second-round draft pick of the Knicks in 2021 who is averaging 7.2 points per game coming off the bench. During the summer, three big-name players signed for Barcelona: Tomas Satoransky, who had already been to Barcelona before going to the NBA, Nikola Kalinic, last year with the Red Star but in the past, he used to play for Fenerbahce, where he played along Jan Vesely, who also came in the summer. Last season’s MVP, Nikola Mirotic, remained but is currently injured. To make up for the loss, Mike Tobey, formerly in Valencia, a Slovenian international, was signed. Another summer newcomer was Oscar Da Silva, a power forward from Alba Berlin, who spent four years at Stanford. Over the first four games, four players have always started: Laprovittola (11.5 points and 4.2 assists per game, who is shooting 43.1 percent from three), Satoransky (9.0 points, 4.2 rebounds and 4.8 assists per game), Kalinic (7.2 points and 4.5 rebounds on average) who is also the most used player over 28 minutes per game, and Sanli (10.0 points per game, 62.2 percent shooting from two). At at the power forward position, it is starting Mike Tobey (52.2 percent from three) or Jan Vesely (11.0 points per game). Higgins (6.2 points per game) is coming off his best game in Kaunas, but he normally comes off the bench along Alex Abrines (6.2 points per game, 50.0 percent from three) and Jokubaitis.
THE BARCELONA CONNECTION – Cory Higgins won the EuroLeague with Kyle Hines at CSKA Moscow in 2019 and played next to Jo Voigtmann. Jan Vesely and Nikola Kalinic won it with Fenerbahce and Gigi Datome in 2017 as well as playing with Nicolò Melli with the same team. Brandon Davies played in Barcelona for three years with two Final Four appearances and a Spanish championship. He was coached by Sarunas Jasikevicius also at Zalgiris just like Kevin Pangos. Pangos played for Barcelona for two years, but in his second season, he was injured and practically never managed to play. Deshaun Thomas spent in Barcelona the entire 2014/15 season.
MELLI FOR MVP – Nicolò Melli became the ninth Olimpia player to win (along Sasha Vezenkov and Mike James) the award as MVP of the EuroLeague round, normally awarded to the player with the best index rating among those who won the game. Melli had 29 rating points in Munich. Before him, the award was won by Mike Hall, Omar Cook, Curtis Jerrells, Samardo Samuels, Alessandro Gentile, Jamel McLean, Ricky Hickman, Mike James.
GAME NOTES – Nicolò Melli is within one single offensive rebound from 300 in his career (he occupies 25th place all-time) and has passed the 900 defensive rebounds in his career. He overtook Mirsad Turkcan (902) to climb to 7th place ever. Finally, he surpassed the 1,200 total career rebounds, 13th ever, and the 500 rebounds in the Olimpia jersey, second ever after Kaleb Tarczewski’s 626. Kevin Pangos has scored at least one triple in all of the last 32 EuroLeague games he has played. Billy Baron is two threes away from reaching 200 for his career.
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