The 2017 EuroLeague champion qualified for the 2024 Final Four in dramatic fashion
Fenerbahce rewrote the history books with Game 5 win at Monaco
![Fenerbahce rewrote the history books with Game 5 win at Monaco](https://media-cdn.incrowdsports.com/2095eb24-ec67-4002-80eb-8684d1601074.jpg?crop=1308%3A736%3Anowe%3A0%3A48)
Fenerbahce Beko Istanbul has a habit of making history in the Turkish Airlines EuroLeague Playoffs. Back in 2017, Fenerbahce was the first-ever side to win Games 1 and 2 as the road team. Now, in 2024, it became the first-ever team to win a Game 5 as the visiting squad as it beat AS Monaco at Salle Gaston Medecin to advance to the Final Four in Berlin, Germany.
Just a few hours after the final buzzer in Monaco, Olympiacos Piraeus matched that same feat by downing FC Barcelona in Game 5 at Palau Blaugrana. There had been 19 seasons of best-of-five series and zero road winners in a Game 5, with the home teams going 19-0. Then, Fenerbahce and Olympiacos broke that curse on the same night.
That’s not to say that it was easy for Fenerbahce, though. Anything but. In what was a nervy contest throughout against AS Monaco, Fenerbahce was outscored in the opening two quarters and saw itself trailing 40-35 at the halftime break. A 6-point swing in the third allowed Saras Jasikevicius’s men to take a narrow 55-56 lead into the final frame, but Monaco did enough to win the fourth quarter by a solitary point, thus forcing overtime.
A memorable and historic overtime period
Of course, it needed the first-ever overtime in a Game 5 for history to be made. But Fenerbahce wouldn’t have had it any other way. In the extra period, the visitors led just once heading into the final 30 seconds, with Monaco seemingly on course for back-to-back Final Four appearances and the Game 5 curse set to extend to 20-0 since 2005.
However, Nick Calathes – who had gone 1 for 8 from distance with 2:06 to go in overtime – quickly wrote his name into Fenerbahce legend. Having made it 77-77 with 1:01 left by hitting his second three-pointer of the night, the 35-year-old made it back-to-back triples with what proved to be a dagger three as Fenerbahce took a 79-80 edge into the final 19 seconds. He wasn’t done there. On the final play of the game, Calathes’s pressure on Elie Okobo allowed Georgios Papagiannis to force a turnover and send the Fenerbahce fans in the upper deck at Salle Gaston Medecin into raptures.
“I’m happy for my guys,” Calathes told EuroLeague TV afterward. “We’ve got a bunch of guys who are hungry. We’ve worked all year, we’ve been through adversity. Guys like Scottie [Wilbekin], Tyler [Dorsey], Papagiannis – first Final Four, man. The guy works his ass off. [Marko] Guduric hit amazing shots, Tarik [Biberovic], Nate [Sestina]. We have a family as a team and we all help each other out. [Johnathan] Motley was huge for us today. I could keep speaking, but I’m just very excited about going to the Final Four and doing it with these guys and this club.”
Confidence, despite what had happened before
Heading into Fenerbahce’s do-or-die meeting with Monaco on Wednesday evening, there was a quiet confidence among many that either Fenerbahce or Olympiacos would make history by becoming the first road teams to win a Game 5. Yet, for Fenerbahce at least, the Turkish side had only ever played one Game 5 – also as the visitor – and it lost, falling in Piraeus last year.
Monaco, meanwhile, was playing in its third straight Game 5. It was defeated as the road team in 2022, losing to Olympiacos, but it advanced to the Final Four in 2023 after beating Maccabi Playtika Tel Aviv at home. Therefore, the historical advantage – past and present – was on the side of the Monegasques. Coach Jasikevicius, however, never had any doubts.
“We were always ahead in the series,” the Lithuanian stated in the post-game press conference. “1-0, 2-1, with big opportunities to seal the deal. We didn’t do it. The players really understood that it would take this type of effort. We were not perfect today, fifth game on the road. The most important thing was to take it to the point where it’s nobody’s game. You guys saw it – at the end, Monaco could have won, Fenerbahce could have won. The ball fell Fenerbahce’s way. It’s as simple as that.”
More history was made
That wasn’t the only bit of history that Fenerbahce achieved. By beating Monaco, the 2017 EuroLeague champion became just the second team in the past five years to win a series as the lower-seeded side, following in the footsteps of Anadolu Efes Istanbul, which knocked out the higher-seeded EA7 Emporio Armani Milan in 2022 en route to its second consecutive EuroLeague crown. Will a similar outcome await Fenerbahce in Berlin?
Well, for the time being at least, Jasikevicius wants to bathe in the glory of Wednesday’s Game 5 victory. The time to think about Fenerbahce’s semifinal matchup with Panathinaikos AKTOR Athens can be put on the back burner.
“It’s not the moment to talk about Berlin,” he added. “We need to enjoy this moment. The players left their hearts and souls out there. Like I said, we must be extremely happy and we are extremely happy. Berlin can wait.”