Coach Oscar Orellana leads Barca to another victory
Barca's strong fourth quarter leads to seventh win
Отчеты о матчах
3 Минутное чтение
Regular Season
Round 11 of 38
Regular Season
FC BarcelonaBAR
8881
Virtus BolognaVIR
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It was not an easy EuroLeague double-round week for FC Barcelona, but interim head coach Oscar Orellana survived it with flying colors.
After edging FC Bayern Munich 74-75 on the road on Wednesday, Barca rallied to beat Virtus Bologna 88-81 at Palau Blaugrana on Friday. Coach Xavi Pascual is now set to start his second stint with the club with a 7-4 record in the EuroLeague Regular Season.
Above all, Barca fought back when Virtus was showing its best version. A poor third quarter put Barca on the ropes and when Aliou Diarra dunked, Virtus led 61-69 with nine minutes left. Barca needed answers on defense and to recover its shooting touch on offense - after hitting 8-of-12 three-pointers in the first half, Barca had gone 0-of-7 from downtown in the third quarter. The home team succeeded at both ends, finding its scoring rhythm and playing defense with much higher intensity, backed by a great crowd.
Dario Brizuela provided the fireworks with a bomb from beyond the arc, and Joel Parra soon added back-to-back three-pointers to quickly put Barca back in charge, 70-69. It was the start of a game-changing 16-0 run which Tomas Satoransky capped with another triple. Barca managed to keep Virtus scoreless for over 5 minutes, in which the guests missed six shots and picked up four turnovers. But the Italian team then fought back, as Momo Diouf and Matt Morgan brought their team as close as 83-80 in the next-to-last minute.
Barca needed a clutch player and found one in Will Clyburn, who buried a critical three-pointer over Diouf's defense to make it 86-80 with 51 seconds left. When Clyburn then collected a steal at the other end, Barca was well on its way to its seventh victory.
The hosts had fought hard for the win, and its fourth quarter numbers were excellent. Barca grabbed as many as nine offensive rebounds in the final 10 minutes, had 6 assists and just one turnover. Virtus, meanwhile, struggled to score in the final period, missing of its three shots from downtown and picking up six turnovers after limiting those to just seven in the opening 30 minutes. Barca fans bought into the team's hustle, heart and winning mentality, staying really active throughout and rewarding the team with a huge ovation at the end of the game.
Kevin Punter led the winners with 17 points on 5-of-6 three-pointers. Clyburn added 13 and Jan Vesely had 12, but Barca fans left with the feeling that everyone contributed to the victory.
"We owe these fans good basketball games, so I was glad we were able to take care of home court against a good Virtus team and we just got to keep building off this." Punter said after the game. "We have to take it week by week, day by day. Don't try to look too far ahead, just stay in the moment and just keep building."
As for Coach Orellana, he is expected to resume his assistant coach duties once Coach Pascual joins the team on Monday, after a week he will never, ever forget.
"It was surely was the most emotional and also the toughest week of my life, I am sure, but I'm lucky because I had a team that played amazing, that fought for every f---ing ball, so I'm really proud of this team," he said. "On Monday, we talked to the team and we said 'OK guys, now we need to take one step ahead, everybody, talking about responsibility, individually and as a team.
“We talked about commitment and pride, and I think this message we sent to the players was perfect because they understood it really, really well and that's why we won the games."
