Stats review: Notes on Zalgiris's fast start

Sportradar takes a deeper look at Zalgiris's 3-0 start to the 2025-26 EuroLeague Regular Season

Only one team remains unbeaten after three rounds of the 2025-26 EuroLeague Regular Season. That remarkable parity is what fans should expect from the league at this point, putting the level Zalgiris Kaunas has had to play at to avoid an early loss into context. Facing last year’s finalists back-to-back in the opening two-round week and traveling to face an FC Bayern Munich team that has been tough at SAP Garden, the historic Lithuanian club has not benefited from an easy schedule to start the year under first-year head coach Tomas Masiulis, but has a perfect record nonetheless.

The formula has not been overwhelmingly complex for the Zalgiris; it is playing at one of the league’s slowest paces, which has magnified its hot shooting to start the year. While shot selection and activity level off the ball have stood out as well, Zalgiris has shot a league-best 48% from beyond the arc while using a league-high 26.6% of its possessions in the final 4 seconds of the shot clock. The team has already scored 65 points in late clock situations - 15 more than the next most prolific teams and some 7 points per game more than last season’s top scoring team. The result has been a pressure cooker for opposing offenses as they have not only been unable to keep up shot-for-shot, but have had fewer opportunities to establish a rhythm or make headway on the scoreboard.

A confluence of things have gone right for Zalgiris on the offensive side where it leads the EuroLeague in efficiency in the early going, but the performance of Sylvain Francisco has been especially key as the 28-year-old has not only been a creative force with his ability to make something out of nothing under time pressure, but he’s also started the year shooting 9-of-15 from beyond the arc. Even with some regression to the mean inevitably on the way, his shooting has been a separating factor early on in a league where competitive advantages are extremely hard to come by.

Moses Wright has played a notable role in Zalgiris’s execution as well, ranking second in the EuroLeague behind Francisco in points scored in late clock situations. His timely play finishing to go along with the spot-up shooting provided by Dustin Sleva, Maodo Lo, Nigel Williams-Goss, and Azuolas Tubelis has made Zalgiris a daunting matchup thus far. This group has not just demoralized defenses right before the shot clock buzzer, it has been opportunistic in transition, cut extremely effectively off its spacing, and had no issue sharing the ball while limiting miscues.

Momentum is a fleeting thing in the EuroLeague as the bar is extremely high to string together wins. Coach Masiulis’s team has found it to start the year with a spectacular start offensively. While the move to a 38-game regular season means there is an even longer way to go to reach the playoffs, the way the league landscape looks early on suggests the recent trend of razor-thin margins along the postseason cut-lines is probably not going anywhere. As a result, the value of road wins and victories over playoff opponents in stretches like this cannot be discounted and, undefeated or not after the coming two-round week, Zalgiris was the first team to strike this season.