Maccabi reached the playoffs as one of the fittest teams (seven victories in the last eight rounds of the regular phase) and the court advantage remains at the first exchange, after knocking down AS Monaco in The Principality (67-79) in the premiere of this series.
The Israeli team took some advantage in the third quarter (41-54) and almost cemented their victory in the last, when he placed the +16 with just over seven minutes to play (50-66). But Kattash did not want any kind of relaxation of his own and stopped the game when Monaco managed to get within eleven (55-66). He did it with a triple by Mike James, the first for him and the second for the entire Monagesco team, which before that added a blushing 1/19 from the line of 6.75 (he finished with 4/26, a worrying 15.6%). Then James himself reduced his rival’s advantage to nine (57-66), but it was a mirage, because Maccabi was superior from start to finish in a game that started very watered down (33-36, at halftime) and was improving, at least for the Israeli team, in the second half.
In this series are three of the six best scorers of the course and something was noticed. Wade Baldwin finished with 20 points (plus 6 rebounds and 6 assists, 26 PIR overall) and Lorenzo Brown, with 15 and two steals. James was, together with Diallo, the top scorer of his team (15), although the point guard did not have a good night. It’s rare to see him miss a free throw, but he finished at 4/8 (in two sets of three, he missed two in a row). He also finished with 5/12 in field goals, quite the opposite of Josh Nebo, 12 points (no misses) and 8 rebounds for him.
The second game of this series, also in Monaco, will be played this Thursday at 8:15 p.m. Monaco, champion of the Eurocup in 2021, aspires to get into the Final Four for the first time while Maccabi has not entered the top four since 2014, the year in which they won the title in the final against Madrid.