ISR - Maccabi progress after comeback win

PAU (Euroleague) - Maccabi Elite staged a dramatic comeback in overtime to reach the Euroleague quarter-finals with a 98-94 road win over Pau-Orthez in France.

Having led throughout, Maccabi were outscored 31-22 in the final period as Pau forced the extra period.

With Maccabi leading 89-86, Aaron Miles went to the line for Pau, making the first before deliberately missing a second to grab the rebound and score to tie it 89-89.

Pau then scored the first five points in overtime as Maccabi were left reeling.

But Jamie Arnold dunked, Tal Burnstein made a pair of free throws and Arnold added one more from the stripe to tie the game at 94-94.

They re-took the lead on a Burnstein jumper and Pau blew a chance to tie it again as Michael Wright missed a pair from the charity stripe.

Derrick Sharp made two from the line to seal the win for the visitors.

Unicaja became a Top 16 group champion for the first time in their history with a 73-62 win over Dynamo Moscow.

Marko Tusek scored 19 points off the bench for the hosts, who were cheered on by a capacity crowd in Malaga.

Marcus Faison also reached double figures with 10 points.

Not a single Dynamo player reached double figures with Sergey Bykov, Sergey Monya and Andrei Trushkin all stuck on nine.

The win improves Unicaja to a 4-1 record in Group G.

Dynamo are tied with Benetton Treviso at 3-2, with the two teams set to face each other in Moscow next week. A place in the playoffs and a meeting with Panathinaikos will be on the line.

Pana secured top spot in Group F with a 95-68 rout of Prokom Trefl Sopot, securing home advantage in the next stage.

Pana improved to 5-0 with a thoroughly dominant performance as they led 47-28 at the break, offering Prokom no way back.

Demos Dikoudis scored 19 points, Dimitris Diamantidis had 13 and Milos Vujanic 11 for the Greens.

Rashid Atkins led Prokom with 15.

Bozidar Maljkovic guided Tau Ceramica to victory in his first game back in the Euroleague as they won 77-72 at Lottomatica Roma.

Maljkovic has taken charge with Velimir Perasovic recovering in Croatia after a health scare.

Despite the absence of top-scorers Luis Scola or Argentina and Turkey's Serkan Erdogan with injuries, Tau won their seventh straight game.

Brazilian Tiago Splitter picked up the slack, scoring 18 points and adding nine rebounds.

Mirza Teletovic and Igor Rakocevic added 17 each and Sergi Vidal 10 for the winners.

Ognjen Askrabic had 19 points for Roma, who saw their last hope of progression slip away.

Ian Parker
FIBA