Arnas Velicka’s near triple-double powered Neptunas to a memorable 98–92 victory that halted Group A Jerusalem’s automatic quarterfinal push
Neptunas stuns group leader Jerusalem to keep playoff hopes alive
Game Report
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Regular Season
Round 16 of 18
Regular Season
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Neptunas KlaipedaNEP
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Hapoel Midtown JerusalemJLM
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Whether it reaches the postseason or not, Neptunas Klaipeda celebrated a victory that will long live in the memory of its passionate fans after the Lithuanian side overpowered Hapoel Midtown Jerusalem 98-92 to put on hold the Group A leader’s automatic quarterfinal berth.
Hapoel slipped to 12-4 after a second successive defeat, having suffered an 82-94 setback in Round 15 to Bahcesehir College Istanbul and the Turkish side is hot on the Israeli side’s heels.
Neptunas, in turn, improved to 7-9 and kepts its slim chances to earn a postseason berth alive, which they thoroughly deserved on the evidence of Wednesday night’s gritty performance.
Having led for much of the enthralling contest on the shores of Lithuania’s Baltic coast, Neptunas blew Hapoel away in the paint as it won the battle of the boards 42-25 while its versatile guard Arnas Velicka flirted with a triple-double, posting 16 points, 12 assists and 9 rebounds.
Top scorer Rihards Lomazs poured 31 points - 20 of them in the first half when Hapoel overturned a 33-25 first quarter deficit to lead 54-55 at halftime as Jared Harper and Khadeen Carrington led the visiting team’s effort on offense.
However, the tables turned again after the break as the hosts engineered an 8-0 run and never looked back, fending off every Hapoel attempt of a comeback through sheer grit and determination on defense, which compensated for a poor shooting night from long range, 7-of-26 (26.9%).
Donatas Tarolis chipped in with 15 points for Neptunas and Karlis Silins racked up 8 and 10 rebounds, but the plaudits duly went to Velicka, who produced one of his most impressive EuroCup performances against much heralded opposition.
Asked whether the thought of amassing a triple-double had flashed across his mind during the game, Velicka said in his postgame comments:
“Not really, I thought maybe, but it’s not about that, the most important thing is that we got the win. We kept alive our hopes of getting into the second round, so I am very happy for the team, the fans and the coaching staff.
“We did a great job defensively in the second half as Hapoel scored less than 40 points and that’s great, given all this talent they have got. It was a win-or-die game, so I am very happy how we stepped up, as everybody contributed.”
Head coach Gediminas Petrauskas echoed Velicka’s view and praised the noisy crowd, which got behind Neptunas in full force and carried the team in the home stretch when Hapoel threw everything but the kitchen sink at the hosts.
“In the second half, we took the shots we needed to take and we owe a big thank you to this crowd for scoring 98 points as we didn’t shoot so well from three-point range,” Petrauskas said. “Everybody did their part to win today so congratulations to all of them. Now it’s one game at a time.”
Harper led Hapoel’s effort on 19 points and Carrington added 16, while Cassius Winston and Isaiah Mobley netted 15 and 14, respectively. Austin Wiley racked up 10 and 6 boards but the rest of the crew failed on both counts, as their lack of scoring prowess went hand in hand with porous defending.
The sub-standard performance, which may come back to haunt Hapoel, left a bitter taste for Coach Yonatan Alon, who acknowledged that his team was beaten in all departments.
“We let them play,” he said. “We didn’t do the right things on defense and that’s what happens. We couldn’t set the tone from the beginning and Neptunas beat us on most of the physical possessions.
“They took 42 rebounds and we took 25, which means they had 17 possessions more than us. Rebounding is teamwork like everything else, whether we do something good or bad it’s always as a team.”
