Following three successive defeats, the champs closed shop on defense to overcome a stuttering start against the German side
Fenerbahce bounces back with big win over Bayern to get on track
Game Report
3 Mins read
Regular Season
Round 5 of 38
Regular Season
Fenerbahce Beko IstanbulFBB
8873
FC Bayern MunichBAY
Overview
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One must have wondered if the wheels had come off at Fenerbahce Beko Istanbul as the defending EuroLeague champs looked all at sea in the first quarter against FC Bayern Munich. In the end, however, they managed to get their act together.
Having lost three in a row after the opening 96-77 win over Paris Basketball, including an embarrassing 69-93 home mauling by newcomers Dubai Basketball in Round 4, Fenerbahce showed some character to turn the tide in an 88-73 defeat of Bayern.
It was welcome respite for coach Sarunas Jasikevicius too, with club president Sadettin Saran keen to extend the Lithuanian tactician’s contract expiring at the end of the season. In his post-game comments, Jasekivicius acknowledged that Fenerbahce’s first priority was to find some consistency before becoming an entertaining outfit again.
“We tried to do too much in the first quarter and we have to understand that we can’t win playing pretty basketball at the moment,” he said. “We need to dig a little bit deeper, get some stops and somehow find some rhythm on offense. It will take time, we need our injured players back and the new arrivals to understand how we play.”
The normally noisy Istanbul crowd looked completely subdued as Bayern raced into a 14-20 lead before Scottie Wilbekin, making a gradual comeback from a serious knee injury which had sidelined him for a year, got Fenerbahce going with a couple of trademark long range efforts.
Wilbekin finished on 14 points and Mikael Jantunen paced Fenerbahce on a game-high 15, having sank 5-of-6 shots from downtown. However, the player of the game accolade went to Wade Baldwin, who racked up 13 points, 3 boards and as many assists.
Fenerbahce committed a staggering 9 turnovers in the first quarter but kept the damage down to a total of 16, having nailed 13-of-27 long-range efforts as the hosts conjured a decisive 17-1 run in the second half to grab an unassailable 70-46 lead early in the fourth quarter.
“It was very important to treat this game like a final when a team like this loses three in a row at any point in the season, especially at the beginning,” said Baldwin. “Teams have been more energetic and more physical than us, so we wanted to turn that around today. We’re a dangerous team when those shots go in, today was a good day and we’ll be ready for the next one.”
Wilbekin, who made a long awaited EuroLeague return in the drubbing by Dubai when he scored 7 points in a lackluster team effort, seems to have rediscovered his mojo as he sank 4-of-8 shots from downtown and was instrumental at both ends of the court against Bayern.
The guard netted 14 points in just 15 minutes on the court, providing the spark on offense so painfully missing in Fenerbahce’s previous three outings, while he also marshalled the troops on defense to stifle out Bayern’s sharpshooters.
“We really wanted to come out and respond after the last game and I think we did,” said Wilbekin. “We were physical, we put in the effort and grabbed a lot of offensive rebounds.”
With both teams on a 2-3 record, Bayern head coach Gordon Herbert acknowledged that his men fell short on offense. “We really struggled on the offensive after a good first quarter,” he said. “They started making some threes in the third quarter and that was it.”
