What will happen in game 4 of the EuroLeague playoffs?
This season’s Euroleague Playoff is really interesting, FC Barcelona is the only team qualified for the Final 4 so far completing a 3-0 sweep of Zalgiris Kaunas with a 66-77 road win, the other 3 series needing at least game 4.
Partizan Mozzart Bet Belgrade – Real Madrid
This series is also the most exciting, after two unexpected away wins Partizan returns home where they hope to finish the series with Real Madrid. Without Punter and Lessort, the Serbs hoped to finish the game after a dream start 28-13, if Punter was somehow replaced by LeDay, Smailagic and Madar on the offensive side the absence of the man who leads Obradovic’s defense Lessort was decisive, Tavares was unstoppable in the paint finishing with 26 points, 11 rebounds and 3 assists. Game 4 will be different, Lessort will be back and Partizan’s defense will look different. Gabriel Deck will return for Real Madrid, while Yabusele and Punter remain suspended. I expect the Serbs to recover faster and be helped by the fans to solve the qualification in this match.
Maccabi Playtika Tel – AS Monaco
After the matches in France, this series returns to Israel for matches 3 and 4. Although starting as home favorites Maccabi had a very poor game 3 with only 24% from the 3-point line, allowing Monaco to win and regain their lost home-court advantage mostly thanks to James: 21 points, 3 rebounds, 4 assists. Maccabi which is a fortress at home already has 2 consecutive home losses, it’s been quite a long time since they lost 3 consecutive home games so I think Baldwin-Brown will send the game to the decider in France.
Fenerbahce Beko Istanbul – Olympiacos Piraeus
The matches in Greece showed us that the duel between the 1st and 8th-place teams is much more balanced than the statistics show. The Greeks showed that they have only 2 valuable players Vezenkov-Sloukas, while the Turks have a strong squad, although they still have some absences. Game 3 just validated this, 2 3-pointers scored in the last minute by Vezenkov and Sloukas gave Olympiakos a 72-71 win. Sloukas had 25 points and Vezenkov 17 points, which means more than half of the points scored by the Greeks, for Fenerbahce the answer came from Dorsey 21 points. Game 4 looks to be just as exciting and there’s a good chance we’ll have Game 5 in this series.
Valentin Petruta
Photo credit: EuroLeague
