Real Madrid will host a very tired Armani Milan
In the round 14 of Euroleague, Real Madrid and Olimpia Milano will face each other in a match between two good roster and two good coaches, high ambitions and big budgets. Real Madrid is currently on second place with a 10-3 record, while Olimpia Milano is on 8th place with a 7-6 record.
This round in Spain, Real Madrid had to travel to Sevilla where they beat Real Betis 84-64. Everything was settled from the first quarter when Real took a 16 points advantage. They played a very good game defensively, allowing Betis to score only 38% from their shots from the field. They won the rebounds battle, had more assists and most interesting, had 7 blocks to 1 from their opponents, 3 of them were made by Walter Tavares. The main contributors were: Fabien Causeur (18 points), Trey Thompkins (16 points and 4 rebounds) and Jaycee Carroll (12 rebounds and 3 rebounds). They used their entire available roster in this game, with 12 players playing more than 9 minutes, which means their starting players played fewer minutes in order to be ready for this big fight against Milano.
Olimpia Milano is in the middle of heavy matches and long trips right now. They travelled to France, then back to Italy where they face a tough opponent in Venezia and now, after two days, they travel to Spain to face Real Madrid. They managed to get the last shot win against Venezia this weekend, 71-70, which gave them a little morale boost before this clash. The game was pretty intense and balanced, but in the end, the better roster won, despite a huge fight from the opponents and a noisy crowd. The main contributors were: Sergio Rodriguez (19 points and 3 assists), Luis Scola (11 points and 5 rebounds) and Vladimir Micov (11 points and 3 rebounds). In this game, Jeffrey Brooks, Christian Burns and Shelvin Mack were not used. What caught my attention was the big amount of turnovers they’ve made in this game, 16, double than their opponents who had only 8. They need to take care more of the ball and execute better to have a chance in Spain against Real.
In the last 3 Euroleague seasons, Real Madrid got the win in every duel they had after big scoring games. I expect the same result in this encounter because Milano is tired due to their heavy schedule with 3 games in France, Italy and Spain in only 6 days. However, Real has a more powerful second unit than Milano and if the fatigue won’t play its part in the game, then the rotation will.
Photo:
Bogdan Vasile Tirc
