He Unicaja will play the play off of the Endesa League after two seasons of a sinister void. And with confirmed participation six days from the end! The great victory for the compositor team against Breogán (74-90) this Thursday confirmed the presence of the people from Malaga among the eight teams that will fight for the ACB title after the end of the regular season.
The accounts are simple. The Galician team can no longer catch up with Unicaja because it has lost the average (five victories difference plus the tiebreaker). Valencia and Bilbao could reach the typesetters -in case they win everything and those of Ibon Navarro lose it-. However, both have to play each other so one will no longer arrive. so confirmed, Unicaja, in case anyone had any doubts, has returned.
What a way to end Thursday. It deserved no less a day that opened with the news of the Basketball Champions League Final Four in Malaga next May and that closed with the 19th victory of Ibon Navarro’s team in the Endesa League. And there is more! He eighth consecutive win between Liga Endesa and BCL. It seems like it’s a simple number and we don’t stop to think about what it means to achieve it in a competition as tough as the ACB. ANDl Breogán is the best example to show how difficult it is to win and, furthermore, doing it away from home without the support of your fans. And very important, in the middle of April when the legs begin to weigh.
Looking only at Unicaja, this Thursday could have seemed like a strange game for 30 minutes. Without fluidity, without rhythm in the game, without distributing the ball. And it is that we must never forget that in front there is another team that always seeks to make things complicated. The other day it was Monbus Obradoiro and this Thursday Breogán, a team that squeezes like nobody else in the Pazo dos Deportes as a fan worthy of the most exciting basketball. The remedy? Tyson Carter most spectacular of the season with 25 points.
start stuck
It was not a smooth start. Unicaja took a long time to find a solution to this drainage created in the area by ethan happ and when he did… well, the people of Malaga they went from 8-7 to 8-14. Veljko Mrsic saved it, but the compositors had already entered the match -with the odd mistake when it came to taking care of the ball-, although there were still things to improve. Everything was slowed down by the changes. Fresh air, at least in attack, did not arrive. Even so, 15-20 at the end of the first quarter.
The beginning of the second quarter was exciting. A partial 0-6 could have suggested that the typesetters were beginning to increase the marches. Although not much further from reality. From 15-26 he went to 31-30. Ibon Navarro had tried to stop him, but it was not the time and there he took advantage of Breogán to grow with a Pazo dos Deportes exalted and a Nenadic lit from the triple. Goodbye to any advantage. So fast and so amazing. Until the headlines appeared again. Arreón final and at rest with 37-44.
It didn’t change the dynamic. One gave and another responded. So throughout the meeting. When Unicaja found a spectacular Brizuela, Happ returned again (46-53). When Djedovic and Carter appeared in the match, Nenadic struck down the green and purple difference with a triple hit (57-65). That unstoppable moment of the ’11’ compositor was not even maintained. A constant return that served to lead the score at the end of the third quarter (62-68) without ever giving security.
And as has been the trend this season, Unicaja arrived in the last quarter, the one that takes a step forward in the physical aspect, the one that increases the speed of the ball, the one that amazes any basketball fan. Breogán had held on, and very well, for 30 minutes, but in the final period they found an SUV that swept down the track. Carter, Djedovic, Perry, Kalinoski… they all shone to close a victory that is well worth qualifying for the playoffs six days from the end of the regular season. Nothing to do with Unicaja from less than a year ago in that grotesque closing of the league competition on the same court where he gave his umpteenth basketball lesson this Thursday.