A flurry of steals in the last 7 minutes allowed Efes to upend Partizan's designs on a road victory in Istanbul
Efes very literally stole its thrilling win over Partizan
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Regular Season
Round 10 of 34
Group Regular Season
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When a team reaches the century mark in points for the first time in more than 18 months, it may seem incongruous to point to its defense as the key to victory, but that's exactly the case in Anadolu Efes Istanbul's thrilling 100-94 home win over Partizan Mozzartbet Belgrade on Friday.
Efes was behind 64-74 entering the fourth quarter and had made 8 steals in the game's first 30 minutes. In the final 7 minutes, Efes doubled that total, which helped unleash a flood of easy points that would turn the game around.
Its 8 fourth-quarter steals were as many as any Turkish Airlines EuroLeague has made in any single quarter since Efes itself had 9 in the first quarter against Strasbourg of France almost exactly 10 years ago, on November 29, 2013. And Efes's game-ending total of 16 steals was also the best by 3 of any EuroLeague team this season.
Forcing turnovers on Partizan was very much what Efes had in mind coming into the game. The visitors were missing injured point guard Aleksa Avramovic, and Efes started early in the game double-teaming whatever Partizan player brought the ball across halfcourt, collecting 7 first-half steals.
"It was part of the game plan that we needed to be very aggressive on their guards," head coach Erdem Can explained after the game. "We knew that because of the injuries and stuff, they don't have many players in their guard lineup. This is why they used Zach LeDay and even Alen Smailagic sometimes at [small forward], and we expected that to be one of their strategies. Our guards were aggressive, but the times they weren't [Partizan] got the advantage."
After the break, however, Partizan adjusted, the turnovers dried up, and the visitors outscored Efes 14-29 to turn a five-point deficit into a 10-point lead.
For Efes, its scoring prowess did indeed set up the game-turning defense. Efes outscored Partizan 12-4 to start the fourth quarter by drawing within 76-78. Will Clyburn got his team's first fourth-quarter steal with 7 minutes left, and then the floodgates opened. Over the last 5 minutes, 11 seconds – at the start of which ties and lead changes continued – five different Efes players joined to make seven more steals, with Shane Larkin making 2 beauties and Rodrigue Beaubois 2 more in the final minute.
Larkin, Clyburn and Ante Zizic all led the collective effort with 3 steals each, helping to force a season-high 20 giveaways on Partizan.
Without that defensive aggressiveness, Efes would never have reached 100 points and might not have come away with a thrilling win that broke its tie in the standings with Partizan. Efes is now 5-5 and tied with three other teams for eighth place.
"We've been preaching it all week. We knew that the key to this game was to be aggressive on both sides of the ball," Larkin said. "hat's a very good team over there with a whole lot of talent. We had to be defensively aggressive."