Canadians In Europe: October 20th - 23rd
This week was one of mixed fortunes for Canadian players in the pan-continental leagues of Europe: great individual performances did not always go hand-in-hand with winning results, and some victories were hard to earn than others.
Euroleague
This week's Euroleague fixtures saw some exciting encounters and high-quality performances - the exception being the game Dyshawn Pierre found himself in with Fenerbahce. In a sorry show for the Turkish team, they fell behind early on to Panathinaikos and faltering on offence throughout the night, could not engineer a comeback.
Pierre had five points for Fenerbahce, who saw only two players reach double digits. With Nemanja Nedovic scoring 28 points in as many minutes, a showing which included seven three-pointers, Panathinaikos comfortably breezed past their opposition, the final score 82-68 in their favour.
EuroCup
Buducnost Podgorica took an early 14-point lead but then trailed by one after a 13-0 run from German opponents, Ulm. Melvin Ejim contributed eight points in the game for the Montenegrin club, but it was Nikola Ivanovic and Petar Popovic who were the difference makers in this back-and-forth affair.
After falling behind by eight points in the third, Ulm's Dylan Osetkowski engineered the comeback attempt for his team, who got to within a point of Buducnost, but threes from Ivanovic and Suad Sehovic helped to close out the game by a final score of 73 to 68, a win which puts them at the top of Group B.
Elsewhere, Conor Mogran started and scored 11 points for Joventut who, after a close first half against Reyer Venezia, started to draw further and further away from their visitors in the third quarter. The Spanish side’s superior short-range play kept them undefeated in Group A with the 92-78 victory over Venezia.
Kenny Cherry’s game-leading 18 points helped lift Brescia from 18 down to three ahead in the third quarter against Malaga, who were unfazed after falling behind. Keeping up the pressure on their Italian visitors, Brizuela instigated the late surge which kept Malaga in the driving seat for the remainder of the game en route to victory, 86 points to 69.
Champions League
In Tenerife's opener of the new Champions League season, Aaron Doornakemp scored 9 points in a game that did not start as many would have expected - the Spanish outfit were lagging behind the Bakken Bears for the first quarter. Remaining in touching distance, after an 11-0 run there was no looking back for Tenerife, who punished the Danish team more and more in the paint.
Three quarters of all Tenerife's field goal attempts dropped for them, in a game where they had 56 points in the paint and led by as much as 26. With an impressive opening performance, Tenerife get their campaign off to the best start, with a 98-73 win.
