The winners improved their all-time record against ALBA to 17-2
Efes continues domination over ALBA with bounce-back win
Anadolu Efes Istanbul rebounded from its home loss to FC Barcelona earlier this week by easing past ALBA Berlin 70-86 for a third win in its last four games. The Turkish side took control of the game with 2-14 run late in the second quarter as it improved to 4-3.
Jordan Nwora and Dan Oturu paced five Efes scorers in double digits with 16 points each. Rodrigue Beaubois scored 14 and Darius Thompson was pulling the strings with 9 points and 8 assists.
ALBA, which has now lost 17 of its 19 showdowns with Efes in the EuroLeague since the turn of the century, has lost four straight games for a 1-6 record. Martin Hermannsson was one of the few bright spots as he tied a career-high with 24 points and Trevion Williams added 16 points and 8 rebounds.
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Efes opened the game with the first 6 points with ALBA coming back to make it 6-8. The combo of Nwora and Vincent Poirier had 8 points as Efes pushed the lead to 13-21. Dogus Ozdemiroglu knocked down a triple and the guests were ahead 17-25 with the score 19-25 after 10 minutes.
Williams scored twice to try to keep ALBA close but Beaubois drained back-to-back three-pointers as the Efes cushion grew to 23-37. Another 3 points from Williams plus a Hermannsson triple had the hosts within 31-37. Efes punched back with a 2-14 run with 11 points coming from Oturu for a 33-51 lead, which was 35-51 at the break.
Efes twice pushed the advantage back to 18 points early in the second half and the gap was as large as 42-61. ALBA was able to score a bit more consistently and managed to make it 52-65 late in the third quarter, which ended with Efes up 52-68.
The advantage grew to 21 points as ALBA needed more than 2 minutes to score in the final frame. Hermannsson and Justin Bean both made triples to breathe a bit of hope into the game for the hosts, who were down 60-75 with 6 minutes left. But a pair of Beaubois three-pointers within 90 seconds had Efes up 63-83. And the German side could not get closer than 16 points the rest of the way.