Mirotic leads Barca to the playoffs, 74-88

FC Barcelona punched its ticket to the Turkish Airlines EuroLeague playoffs by downing Panathinaikos Athens 74-88 at OAKA Altion in the Greek capital in Round 30 on Thursday. Barca snapped a two-game slide and improved to 20-10 in the standings. Panathinaikos dropped to 10-20.
Nikola Mirotic paced the winners with 26 points - 22 of those after the break. Mike Tobey added 16 on 4-of-6 three-point shooting while Tomas Satoransky had 8 points, 9 rebounds and 9 assists for Barca, which heavily outrebounded its opponents, 18-42, in this game. Georgios Papagiannis led Panathinaikos with 19 points. Marius Grigonis added 14 while Matt Thomas had 11 for the Greens.
Game Videos
Papagiannis made a jumper and Derrick Williams added a layup in a 9-2 opening run that Grigonis capped with a triple. Alex Abrines struck twice from downtown to get Barca within 14-8. Williams and Papagiannis kept pacing Panathinaikos and Lefteris Bochoridis's layup made it a double-digit game, 20-10. Jan Vesely rescued Barca and Cory Higgins's jumper got the visitors closer, 25-22, after 10 minutes.
Nikola Kalinic gave Barca a 25-27 lead soon after that. Tobey buried a jumper and struck three times from downtown to singlehandedly keep his team in charge, 36-43, at halftime.
Mirotic took over after the break with 10 quick points, including a three-pointer that caused Panathinaikos to stop the game at 39-53. Thomas and Grigonis tried to change things for Panathinaikos and Papagiannis's huge alley-oop dunk-and-foul made it 60-65. Nikola Kalinic and Rokas Jokubaitis restored a 60-68 Barca lead after 30 minutes.
Kalinic buried a jumper and Mirotic scored around the basket for a 64-73 Barca lead with 6 minutes left. Mirotic followed a fastbreak layup with a three-pointer and Tobey also struck from beyond the arc to seal the outcome, 72-83, with 2 minutes remaining.