For the third round in succession, Vassilis Spanoulis’s men have broken previous club-best marks
Monaco does it again: EuroLeague history made against Paris
Game Report
3 Mins read
Regular Season
Round 14 of 38
Regular Season
AS MonacoASM
125104
Paris BasketballPBB
Overview
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AS Monaco entered the mini break flying.
After setting new club records for margin of victory in back-to-back rounds, defeating LDLC ASVEL Villeurbanne by 32 before downing Anadolu Efes Istanbul by 36, Monaco came into its Round 14 clash with Paris Basketball in buoyant mood. Even more so after eliminating Paris from the French Cup just two days prior.
If that last-16 tie was a high-scoring affair, with Monaco triumphing 109-103, their EuroLeague meeting on Thursday night was historic as the Monegasques romped to a 125-104 victory over the capital club.
You guessed it – Monaco made history once again, this time with the 125 points it dropped.
That beat the club’s previous best mark of 112 points, which came in a 107-112 overtime win at Maccabi Rapyd Tel Aviv in Round 11, and it is the third-highest tally all-time in the EuroLeague. Only the 130 and 126 points scored by Real Madrid and Anadolu Efes Istanbul, respectively, in their famous quadruple-overtime battle in 2023-24 are superior to Monaco’s 125.
Unlike that Real Madrid and Efes game, however, Monaco didn’t require overtime, making this the highest-scoring mark by a team in a non-overtime game. Before Thursday night, that honor was shared by Maccabi and Panathinaikos Athens, which had netted 123 points apiece – now the joint fourth-most points all-time. Maccabi reached that number in a 123-73 win over Pesaro in 2004-05, then Panathinaikos did so in an 83-123 victory at Chorale Roanne in 2007-08. Curiously, 17 of Panathinaikos’s points in that game came from Vassilis Spanoulis, who is now the coach of Monaco.
“We were very focused,” Coach Spanoulis told EuroLeague TV after Monaco downed Paris. “After the first quarter we played very good defense, and we had huge pace on offense to find the open player and be unselfish. We played very good basketball.”
One of the keys to Monaco’s historic night at Salle Gaston Medecin was the play of its three-headed monster in the backcourt – Mike James, Elie Okobo and Matthew Strazel. James enjoyed two milestones of his own, too, moving past Spanoulis into fourth place all-time in assists, and becoming the first player in EuroLeague history to score 5,500 points. But after his 32-point night in the French Cup, he played more of a withdrawn role in Round 14.
Instead, it was Okobo who really led the team on Thursday night. He finished with a season-best 26 points and 8 assists, in addition to 4 rebounds and 3 steals, good for a career-high 39 PIR. His +32 in the plus/minus column said everything about his performance.
“I just try to be efficient and better every single game I play,” Okobo said in his post-game comments. “Just play with the rhythm and the pace the game is giving me, and be efficient when I try something. It was good today. But the most important was the team, and everybody was impactful.”
James ended the night with 16 points and 7 dimes, while Strazel made a career-best 6 three-pointers en route to 22 points, in addition to dishing 7 assists. For the French guard, he was happy with Monaco’s scoring but wants to see his team make it a lot more difficult for the opposition to score.
“We want to play a little better defense,” Strazel said. “We like to keep the opponents under 70 [points] – that’s the goal, especially at home.”
Next up for Monaco is the visit of Fenerbahce Beko Istanbul in a repeat of last season’s EuroLeague Championship Game. Given how Coach Spanoulis’s team is playing at the moment, that game should be appointment viewing for basketball fans right across the globe.
