EUROLEAGUE – Leading internationals take center stage in crunch games

MADRID (Euroleague) - A host of players that will be at the FIBA World Championship later this year will play in vitally important games on Thursday night in the Euroleague.

Spain big man Felipe Reyes and star-studded Real Madrid must win Game 4 of their Quarter-Final at home against Regal Barcelona to remain alive in the competition.

"In Game 4 we will have to fight like it was the last game of our lives," said Reyes, a gold-medal winner with Spain at the 2006 FIBA World Championship in Japan and at last year's EuroBasket in Poland.

"We must force Game 5 or else we are out of the race.

"We will have to come out stronger than in Game 3 and we will also need the help from our fans in the stands."

A development that few would have expected in Madrid is the dominance of their 23-year-old Croatian center Ante Tomic.

Under Italian coach Ettore Messina, Tomic has thrived in both wins, and losses.

He had 23 points in Tuesday's Game 3 defeat at the Vistalegre.

Tomic is more and more looking like an impact player at the FIBA World Championship in Turkey, where Croatia will compete in Group B against the United States, Slovenia, Brazil, Iran and Tunisia.

"We will have to be really focused on the game to avoid Real Madrid's dominance from the beginning, so they do not build leads that help them control the rhythm," Barcelona coach Xavier Pascual said.

"We will have to win in rebounds, which is something very important for us.

"We need to stop Ante Tomic and hurt them from the long range like we did on Game 3.

"But It will be a close game as it is their last chance to survive."

Madrid have eight players that could play at the FIBA World Championship, including Jorge Garbajosa, Sergio Llull and Felipe Reyes of Spain, Tomic of Croatia, Pablo Prigioni of Argentina, Novica Velickovic of Serbia and Darjus Lavrinovic and Rimantas Kaukenas of Lithuania.

Barcelona are also loaded with players likely headed to Turkey, including Slovenians Erazem Lorbek and Jaka Lakovic, Spaniards Ricky Rubio, Juan Carlos Navarro and Fran Vazquez.

Olympiacos, who lead their series against Asseco Prokom, 2-1, are full of players in national teams that will compete for the world title.

Theo Papaloukas, Ioannis Bourousis, Panagiotis Vasilopoulos and Sofoklis Schortsanitis represent Greece, Nikola Vujcic Croatia, Linas Kleiza Lithuania and Milos Teodosic Serbia.

They will try to bounce back in Gdynia after falling there on Tuesday, 81-78, to Prokom.

Caja Laboral have Marcelo Huertas and Tiago Splitter of Brazil, Carl English of Canada and Stanko Barac of Croatia, and those players will look to level their Euroleague Quarter-Final against CSKA Moscow when Game 4 is played in Vitoria.

The Muscovites have Russian national team players Nikita Kurbanov, Victor Keyru, Anton Ponkrashov, Andrey Vorontsevich, Sasha Kaun, Dmitry Sokolov, Viktor Khryapa and JR Holden, Croatian Zoran Planinic and Slovenian Matjaz Smodis, who hasn’t played this season due to injury.

Partizan Belgrade, who lead their Quarter-Final 2-1 against Maccabi Tel Aviv, have Australia international Aleks Maric and Serbia veteran Dusan Kecman in their line-up.

FIBA