Real earned its sixth successive win against the Serbian team, with Serge Ibaka and Xavier Rathan-Mayes among the top performers
Revamped Real continued to haunt Partizan as new arrivals stood out
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Regular Season
Round 2 of 34
Group Regular Season
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Partizan Mozzart Bet Belgrade was on the verge of sealing a sweep over Real Madrid in the 2023 Turkish Airlines EuroLeague Playoffs, before the Spanish giant turned the quarterfinal series on its head and went on to win the continent’s premier club competition.
Since trailing 2-0 in that epic battle, Real has won six games in a row against Partizan, including both regular season matchups last term and Thursday night’s contest, 93-86.
The victory was a stark contrast to the shock 97-89 defeat at FC Bayern Munich in Round 1, when a fourth-quarter collapse dashed Real’s hopes of making a winning start to the season. For three quarters of the titanic tussle with Partizan, Real looked in danger of slipping up again before a 15-0 run in the fourth propelled the home team.
With some of Real’s key players moving on to pastures new during the off-season while others retired, it was up to the new arrivals to step up and they did that in no uncertain terms. Big man Serge Ibaka, a former NBA stalwart who joined Real from Bayern, stood out with 15 points and 7 boards, making light of the departures of Vincent Poirier and Guerschon Yabusele.
Xavier Rathan-Mayes added 12 points, including a pair of clutch three-pointers, as he filled in the void left by the retirement of club legends Rudy Fernandez and Sergio Rodriguez. Just as crucially, pack leader Facu Campazzo used his passing skills to devastating effect as he dished out 11 assists, some of them in spectacular fashion when the chips were down. Ibaka pointed out that a new-look Real was under pressure to deliver after the Bayern fiasco.
“The key was hard defense and it made offense easy,” the big man said in a courtside interview. “Sometimes in can be a bit stressful when you’re still trying to find your confidence but tonight we did a good job as a team. We stuck together to come up with a W and it’s a blessing to wear this jersey.”
Head coach Chus Mateo, who faces a challenging task to keep winning trophies with a reconstructed outfit which is still very much a work in progress, acknowledged he would need all his resources to keep going. That objective took a hit against Partizan when starting guard Andres Feliz was carried off the court into the locker room after appearing to twist his ankle in the first half.
“We played more as a team and with more intensity in the second half,” said Mateo. “They scored a lot of threes in the first half and we were able to contest more shots in the second. We are in two very tough competitions, the (Spanish) Liga Endesa and the EuroLeague, hence we need to use all the players in order to be alive in both competitions at the end of the season,” he added.
Campazzo was pleased with the outcome, having highlighted that the task of molding a new-look Real into a force to be reckoned with was always going to be tough. “It’s a very different team to last season and we are in the process of adapting. Today was a good step forward.”