Andolu Efes visiting Tofas for the clash
The derby of TBL Round 13 will take place in the city of Bursa, where Tofas receive the visit of the reigning champions, Anadolu Efes, in an interesting and tough matchup. Last season Efes won both meetings with big margins, but now they face a stronger Tofas team that will fight for every ball to win their last game at home in 2019. Let’s see what they have done in their last games.
In their last Eurocup game, they received the visit of Lokomotiv Kuban, a team with a good roster and big-budget who aims to win the competition this year. However, Tofas managed to get a 92-90 win after a very balanced game. They had an 11 points lead in the last quarter, but were very close to let the victory slip away. Kuban had many more rebounds and more shots attempts, but they also made a lot of personal fouls and gave Tofas 24 free-throws attempts (they made 18). Another good aspect of the game was their 3-point shooting, where they choose the shots very carefully, finishing the game with 8-14 from distance, while Kuban had 8-28. The main contributors were: Sammy Mejia (21 points and 4 assists), D.J. White (15 points) and Devin Williams (13 points and 5 rebounds).
Anadolu comes in this game after a disappointing defeat suffered against reigning Euroleague’s champions, CSKA Moscow. They had the lead the entire game until the last minutes when CSKA took advantage of poor offensive decisions made by Anadolu and get an 81-80 victory in Turkey. In the last quarter, Efes scored only 3 shots from their 17 attempts, while CSKA had 8 out of 15 attempts. Anadolu didn’t take advantage huge amount of turnovers made by their opponents, 16 in total while suffering 7 blocks, 3 of them from Semen Antonov. Their top performers were: Krunoslav Simon (21 points and 5 rebounds), Shane Larkin (18 points and 4 assists) and Rodrigue Beaubois (10 points). Vasilije Micic was the ‘’ dead hand’’, finishing the game with only 2 points and 4 turnovers in 21 minutes. For CSKA Moscow, Mike James had another big performance, finishing the game with 28 points, 6 rebounds and 4 assists.
Tofas’s morale is high after that win against Kuban, while Efes’s is low, which should give us a tough match because champs must quickly overcome that defeat and show to their Turkish opponents that they are still the best team in Turkey and the one to beat to get the silverware. I expect a win from Anadolu, with a huge game from Micic.
Bogdan Vasile Tirc
