Barcelona, Nov 14 (EFE) .- Valencia Basket ended (79-87) with Barça’s unbeaten record in the Endesa League on a historic afternoon for Joan Peñarroya’s team, who faced the match against the leader with five casualties and ended it dominating with 52 points in the second half.
A final quarter to frame Jasiel Rivero (18 points) and Bojan Dubljevic (15 points) ended up deciding a match that Barça never knew how to take the pulse and that arrived even until the last quarter.
The great game of Mirotic (22 points) was not enough for Barça against the great Valencian choral game in which the young Josep Puerto (10 points) and Jaime Pradilla (7 points) were also fundamental pieces of the victory together with Xabi López Arostegui (17 points).
Valencia started the game without complexes and Jaime Pradilla with a triple and a basket of two put the 0-5 on the scoreboard after two minutes. Nikola Mirotic had to come to the rescue of Barça with 2-6 on the scoreboard to give Barça their first lead (9-6, min. 4) with seven consecutive points.
The Catalans, too soft and clueless in defense, received two triples from Van Rossom and López-Arostegui and a basket from Puerto that put Valencia five up (9-14, min. 6). That alternation on the scoreboard was the keynote of the entire first half.
Mirotic did not find a relief in the annotation and Valencia, looking for quick shots, always stayed within the game regardless of the age of those who were in the park.
Brandon Davies, as usual, imposed his law under the hoops to put the 21-19 at the end of the quarter but the Catalans returned to their old ways at the beginning of the second quarter, not being able to with Jasiel Rivero when the ball reached the low post in the zonal defense proposed by Jasikevicius (21-23, min. 12).
López-Aróstegui emerged as the top scorer of his team in the first half along with Jasiel Rivero with 9 points to keep the Valencians up (29-30, min. 17).
Barça only scored free throws in the last minutes of a first half in which they scored more baskets from that position than in shots in play to go to rest three points up (38-35).
The Catalans came out after the break with a better individual defense and two triples from Calathes and Sanli seemed to mean the final take-off for Jasikevicius’s men (54-47, min. 26), but it was not like that.
Inferior in the paint, Valencia looked for solutions from long distance and Puerto, López-Arostegui and Prepelic scored to put their team back in front of the scoreboard (56-60, min. 28). The festival from the 6.75 line continued until the end of the quarter, which was reached again in a draw (63-63) after a triple by Van Rossom after Kuric returned the advantage to Barça (63-60).
The Valencians greatly complicated the game for the Catalans at the start of the last period with a 2-15 run with two triples from Bojan Dubljevic (65-77, min. 34) and Jasiel Rivero being the master of both rings.
Barça entrusted themselves to Davies and Mirotic to turn the game around and managed to reduce the difference to six points (77-83) to 1’50 “from the end and insisted, without success, on tracing the match from the three-point line .
Bojan Dubljevic, who scored his 15 points in the second half, sentenced the game with two free throws 46 seconds from the conclusion that gave Valencia Basket a well-deserved victory in which they scored 52 points in the second half over the Catalan team.
Data sheet
79. Barça (21 + 17 + 25 + 16): Calathes (12), Laprovittola (10), Hayes-Davis (-), Mirotic (22), Sanli (5) -starting team-, Davies (12), Martínez (-), Smits (-), Kuric (11), Jokubaitis (3) and Oriola (4).
87. Valencia Basket (19 + 16 + 28 + 24): Van Rossom (6), Puerto (10), López-Arostegui (17), Pradilla (7), Dubljevic (15) -starting team-, Prepelic (11) , Ferrando (-), Rivero (18), Bressan (3), Jiménez (-) and Vila (-).
Referees: Conde, Castillo and Merino. Without eliminated.
Incidents: match corresponding to the tenth day of the Endesa League played at the Palau Blaugrana before 4,319 spectators.
(c) EFE Agency