Keene, Strasbourg triumph on the road, end Bonn's 11-game winning streak

BONN (Germany) - SIG Strasbourg stunned the capacity crowd in Telekom Dome, earning a 77-76 win over Telekom Baskets Bonn with Marcus Keene as the game hero. In a real battle of elite point guards, he had the last word.

Strasbourg now take a 1-0 lead and could reach the Final Four for the second time in BCL history with a win at home next week. Bonn will attempt to bring the series back to Germany by winning on the road.

Turning point: Neither side was able to build a double-digit lead on the night and both teams were up by as many as eight points. The real drama began in the fourth quarter. There were five lead changes up until that point, and six in the last frame alone.

Telekom Baskets Bonn thought they had done enough when they opened up a 74-66 lead with three minutes left to play. But Tim Frazier scored with a layup and Marcus Keene followed up with four straight points for Strasbourg to go on a 6-0 run.

That set up a thrilling final minute, where Bonn missed a couple of free-throws and wasted a chance to have a lead bigger than four points in the closing 60 seconds. That was an invitation for Keene to become a hero, and he came up with a tough layup to cut the gap to two points.

After Leon Kratzer missed a floater for Bonn, Keene asked for an isolation play on the other end and was vindicated by drilling a pull up three-pointer which turned out to be the winner, as TJ Shorts failed to get a decent shot up over DeAndre Lansdowne and Rodions Kurucs on Bonn's last possession.

Game hero: Keene struggled with ball control all game long, turning it over seven times, but that's the best part about Keene - he doesn't dwell on it, he's got the sort of contagious confidence to take the next ball as if he hadn't turned it over even once in his career.

Keene finished with 26 points, 13 of which in the final quarter, and nine in the last two minutes. The 27-year-old guard shot it 11-of-19 from the field, 2-of-2 from the free throw line, with 3 rebounds, 2 assists and a steal also to his name.

Stats don't lie: SIG Strasbourg were holding on to a two-point deficit at the break, which was a superb result, considering they went 2-of-10 from beyond the arc in the first two quarters. They went for 4-of-7 the rest of the way, just enough to steal homecourt advantage in the Quarter-Finals.

Bottom line: Telekom Baskets Bonn lost their first BCL game since Gameday 1, when they were outlasted by UNAHOTELS Reggio Emilia. Their 11 game winning streak is already archived, it was the third longest in BCL history, following AS Monaco's 14 and Lenovo Tenerife's 12.

TJ Shorts got 24 points, 6 assists and 5 rebounds on the night, but no other starters were in double figures for coach Tuomas Iisalo.

Strasbourg are coming back home as the only team with a road win in the first games of the Quarter-Finals. They have it all in their hands now, a win next week would send them back to the Semi-Finals, where they were already back in 2020-21, finishing fourth in Nizhny Novgorod.

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