

Partizan Mozzart Bet Belgrade (19-14) secured a postseason berth with a game to spare after huge performances from point guard Aleksa Avramovic and power forward Zach LeDay helped the Serbian team to 84-88 win at AS Monaco (21-12), which had punched its own playoff ticket three rounds earlier.
Avramovic finished with 22 points, of which 14 came in the second quarter, while LeDay netted just as many, including 7 in a row late in the third quarter. Alen Smailagic and James Nunnally chipped in with 12 each for Partizan, which made the postseason in its first Turkish Airlines Euroleague appearance in eight years.
At the other end, Elie Okobo paced Monaco with a game-high 23 points. Alpha Diallo scored 11, and four other home players contributed with 10 points apiece: Mike James, Donta Hall, Donatas Moteijunas and Jordan Loyd.
Monaco romped into an early 12-2 lead as Partizan’s players were slow to get out of the blocks, but the visitors clawed their way back into the contest thanks to three-pointers from Smailagic and Ioannis Papapetrou. By the end of the first quarter, Partizan had slashed the deficit to 22-18.
The second period saw Partizan turn the tables on the home team as Avramovic lit up the contest after coming off the bench. The livewire point guard hurt Monaco from all angles, having drained some tough shots from behind the arc while also bedazzled his markers with incisive drives to the basket. Monaco started to struggle at the other end, as Partizan opened up a double-digit lead and then took a 35-42 advantage into the locker room at halftime.
The game seemed to have slipped away from Monaco after the visitors surged ahead 38-51 early in the third quarter, but the hosts then showed all the resilience that molded them into a team capable of mixing it with Europe’s best this season. Monaco engineered a 13-0 run which got it right back into the contest, before the versatile LeDay took over in the closing stages of the third period. LeDay sank a three-pointer, followed by a pair of free throws and a tough one-handed jumper, to keep Partizan in the driving seat heading into the fourth quarter.
With the visitors 67-75 ahead as the game entered the home straight, Monaco ramped up its defense and produced a 9-0 run to nose ahead. A tit-for-tat battle ensued before Kevin Punter, who’d had a quiet game, drained an audacious triple with an opponent in his face to put Partizan 80-84 ahead with 16 seconds left on the clock. Monaco did all it could in a catch-up effort, but LeDay and then Avramovic made no mistake from the foul line down the stretch, sending a loud and sizeable contingent of travelling Partizan fans into raptures.