After winning Game 4 at home, Coach Penarroya's charges are one victory from the Final Four
As it has all season, Barça again found a way to fight back
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On Friday night, FC Barcelona rallied for a 79-72 victory over AS Monaco in Game 4 in front of a wild atmosphere at Palau Blaugrana to tie the best-of-five series and force a do-or-die showdown on Tuesday to make it to the Final Four.
"The series is over when a team reaches three wins, and that is what we will try to do in Monaco," head coach Joan Penarroya said.
Penarroya's reaction was somewhat reminiscent of what he said on April 11 after Barcelona clinched a playoff berth in the regular-season finale with a win over Virtus Segafredo Bologna: "For Barça, it is not enough to play in the playoffs, but it is a day to enjoy."
Indeed, for a powerhouse like Barcelona, a two-time EuroLeague champ which is playing in the playoffs for the sixth time in a row and has reached the Final Four in three of the last four seasons, these games are not deemed historic. They are just a note in its thick history book.
And, in all honesty, so could end up being the two wins in this playoff series against Monaco.
However, this season in Barcelona has been unlike any other in recent history and injuries are the reasons why. Saying that it has been an injury-troubled season for FC Barcelona would be an understatement. Barcelona has lost players at every position, with season-ending injuries popping up left and right.
Let's go back to the start of the season. Barça brought in Coach Penarroya along with star guard Kevin Punter, playmaker Juan Nunez, forwards Chimezie Metu and Justin Anderson, and center Youssoupha Fall. Injuries hit Barça hard from the start of the season, as Nico Laprovittola went down in a Spanish League game against Baskonia Vitoria-Gasteiz on October 20. He had taken part in just four EuroLeague games before suffering ACL and meniscus injuries.
Barça bounced back by starting the season with a 5-1 record. That led to Punter being chosen as the EuroLeague MVP for October. Punter has been rock-solid all season, averaging 16.6 points on 94.2% free throw shooting and missing only a few games. Punter, however, was unavailable in the Copa del Rey tournament and Barça did not get out of the quarterfinals.
It got worse: Barça signed playmaker Raul Neto to replace Laprovittola. He was hurt in his first EuroLeague game against Real Madrid. When he returned six games later, Neto was injured again, this time against Crvena Zvezda Meridianbet Belgrade. He played a total of 426 seconds before his contract was terminated by mutual agreement. Barça chose Thomas Heurtel to replace him and start a second stint with the club. The club changed its mind in the very last moment, after Heurtel had landed at the airport.
Injuries kept coming one after the next. Metu suffered a season-ending leg injury late in the regular season, in a home game against FC Bayern Munich. It was his second injury of the season, but this was a season-ending one. After playing in pain for several games, Nunez had knee surgery and will miss the remainder of the season.
Jan Vesely was also sidelined for 10 regular season games with a knee injury. He had been injured and playing in pain since January. Vesely returned in time to face Monaco, but has played a total of 25 minutes in the series and missed Games 3 and 4.
All that forced Penarroya and his coaching staff to be creative and rely on his team's fighting spirit to keep winning games. Its main move was to deploy Dario Brizuela as a point guard for the first time in his career. Brizuela was able to adjust, showing a great basketball IQ and sharing the ball really well without losing one bit of his scoring punch.
Barça seemed to be up and down all season, combining stellar performances with sub-par games. A final push, in which it won six of its last seven regular season games, allowed the team to take a fifth-place finish and set up a playoff showdown with Monaco.
Asked about the team's many injuries after beating Monaco to tie the series, Coach Penarroya offered a key: the team's competitive spirit is what keeps Barça going.
"You know what? In the last few weeks, when I enter the locker room and I see the guys, I no longer think about this. What I think about is that I will have five players on the court that will play to their limit. Because we are going to the limit. The team competes and has not looked for excuses throughout the year. We struggled a lot: it is repetitive, we have played bad games and had defeats that have hurt us, but the team has always competed, and it has never looked back. Being fifth in the EuroLeague regular season, in this EuroLeague, is very remarkable but I know this is not enough for Barça. For none of us, being here is enough.
"No team in the competition has had our problems. Everyone has problems because it is a fierce competition, a wild competition, but no team has even been close to having the problems we had throughout the year. What we want now is to go to Monaco, compete and win. We don't think it is enough to be here with the problems we had. We are a small bunch but we are going to war in order to win it. It can be slingshots against bombs, but we can win."
Down 0-2 in the series, Barcelona showed up to Game 3 in a do-or-die situation with just nine senior players. Three juniors - Raul Villar, Sayon Keita and Mathieu Grujicic - were called up from the U18 squad. With four players out for the season and no signings to help in any way, Barça has found a way to win and right now, it feels stronger than ever despite its many troubles.
In Game 4, Jabari Parker led the way with 22 points. Ironically, after being to hell and back when it comes to injuries over the last few years, Parker is fully healthy and one of only two Barça players, Tomas Satoransky being the other, to take part in all 38 EuroLeague games this season. With Vesely sidelined, Willy Hernangomez stepped up to average 12.5 points and 6.5 rebounds in his team's back-to-back, season-saving wins.
The next goal? To become the first-ever team in EuroLeague history to come back from a 0-2 start in a playoff series without the home-court advantage. Given what Barça has been through all season long, underestimating Coach Penarroya and his group of players would be a big mistake.