ESP/ISR - Maccabi win streak ended by Tau

TEL AVIV (Euroleague) - Maccabi Tel Aviv’s 15-game home winning streak in the Euroleague came to an abrupt end as they lost their Top 16 opener 79-68 to Tau Ceramica on Thursday night.

The win gave Tau a measure of revenge following losses to the Israelis in each of the last two Final Fours.

Tau were without coach Velimir Perasovic, hospitalised this week with chest pains, but started strong with Igor Rakocevic on fire.

The Serbian guard, who played for his country at the FIBA World Championship late last year, scored 16 of his 19 points in the opening period as Tau took a 30-24 lead.

Maccabi stemmed the tide after that, but still trailed by one, 38-37, at the interval.

Tau started the fourth period 57-54 up but after padding their lead a little, an 8-2 run for Maccabi brought the scores back to 67-64 midway through the quarter.

But from there Tau took control to claim an impressive win in Group D.

It was another disappointing result for Maccabi, coming on the back of their shock Israeli Cup semi-final loss to Bnei HaSharon a week ago.

Serkan Edogan scored 14 for the victors and Tiago Splitter added 12 off the bench.

Argentinian star Luis Scola battled foul trouble and was held to eight points in 21 minutes.

Lior Eliyahu led Maccabi with 17 while Tal Burstein added 13.

Unicaja may have been knocked out in the first round of the Copa del Rey in domestic action, but they showed they are no pushovers with a 75-61 win over

Coppa Italia winners Benetton Treviso in Malaga.

Unicaja opened with a 16-2 run and were 53-28 up midway through the third period as Treviso were thoroughly outplayed.

Most encouraging of all for Unicaja was the display of Spain captain Carlos Jimenez, who led his team with 14 points, not missing a shot all night with four of
four from the field and four of four from the free-throw line.

Jimenez has been struggling of late, and this display will have Unicaja hoping of better things to come after they only scraped into the Top 16 on the last day of the regular season.

Daniel Santiago added 13 and Berni Rodriguez had 12 for Unicaja.

Treviso wasted 24 points from Marcus Goree.

In Group G’s other game, Dynamo Moscow were impressive on their Top 16 debut, beating fellow newcomers Aris TT 86-74 on the road.

The decisive 12-1 run came in the final quarter as Dynamo’s defence turned up the heat on their hosts.

Greek duo Lazaros Papadopoulos and Antonis Fotsis did their Russian employers proud with 18 and 16 points respectively. Bojan Popovic added 14 points.

Alex Scales led Aris with 20 points while Michael Wilkinson chipped in 15.

Panathinaikos started their Group F campaign with an 84-57 rout of Efes Pilsen in Athens.

The Turkish side took an early lead, but that only served to anger the Greens, who went on an 11-0 run to take command before the first quarter was over and their lead was an insurmountable 40-22 by half-time.

Dimos Dikoudis led the Greeks with 20 points and seven rebounds despite playing only 19 minutes.

Ramunas Siskauskas and Tony Delk has 12 each while Kostas Tsartsaris also reached double figures with 11.

Horace Jenkins did the bulk of the scoring for Efes with 21 points.

Spanish Copa del Rey winners Barcelona marched on to another fine win as they beat Prokom Trefl Sopot 92-73 behind a stellar display from Gianluca Basile.

The Italian scored 18 points, making five of eight from three-point range, to lead Barca to victory, with Jordi Trias and Fran Vazquez adding 15 each.
Rashid Atkins led Prokom with 19 points.

Ian Parker
FIBA