The Perfumeries Avenida de Salamanca needed an extension to avoid the surprise and win this Wednesday in their visit to the bottom of group A of the Euroleague, the Hungarian KSC Szekszard, by 84-88.
In a small pavilion, but with the warmth of the Hungarian fans, the last classified, a team that has never won in this European competition, against the second, which has only lost two games, against the almighty Yekaterinburg and Prague.
Despite this theoretical difference, the local team stood up to Perfumerías Avenida, which unbalanced the balance in extra time thanks to the exhaustion of the Hungarian team and the power under the rim of Lou Samuelson and Hof.
In the first quarter, Szekszard resisted well the interior and exterior play of the Salamanca team, especially in the face of Copper’s success in triples, and the second began with an 11-0 run that allowed the Hungarians to take the lead with a performance Friskovec star.
It took three and a half minutes for Perfumerías Avenida to score their first basket in that period.
A timeout by Roberto Íñiguez managed to stop the bleeding in attack and in defense of his team thanks, above all, to to the performance, once again, of Hof and Copper, who managed to keep the score in favor of the Spanish team at the time of reaching the break.
Upon return, in the third quarter, the Hungarians pressed again with a 7-0 run, against a Perfumerías Avenida team that did not have the same fluidity as in previous games, especially in attack.
The equality on the scoreboard was maintained until the end of the 40 minutes and in extra time the Salamanca team came out victorious thanks to their great bench, against a Hungarian team with little rotation.
At the end,Perfumerías Avenida avoided surprise and won a match that placed it in second place to be able to face the quarterfinals. Euroleague final with more optimism.