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Game of the Week: A formerly rare derby to savor in Villeurbanne

Game of the Week: A formerly rare derby to savor in Villeurbanne

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1 декабря 20225 Минутное чтение

Game of the Week: A formerly rare derby to savor in Villeurbanne

Games between French League teams in the Turkish Airlines EuroLeague have been much too few and far between until recently.

A country that has as much success and talent as France – where several Monaco players hail from, too – deserves its own derby in the competition that has lifted the profile of many other regional rivalries to an international audience.

Luckily, we'll get just that when AS Monaco visits LDLC ASVEL Villeurbanne on Thursday in the Game of the Week for Round 11.

Prior to the first EuroLeague game between ASVEL and Monaco a year ago, French League teams had never faced off in the competition's regular season this century. What we were missing was evident by the second of those, when ASVEL stormed the principality and won by a hair’s breadth at the buzzer on a memorable half-court shot.

Even when two French League teams played in the old format, which separated teams from the same country in the regular season, they rarely advanced to be mixed together later. Indeed, no French League team ever made the playoffs until last season, when Monaco took Olympiacos Piraeus to five games before losing. That set a new bar for French League teams to aspire to reach. Until then, ASVEL's 13 wins in the 2020-21 season was the country's high-water mark.

There is plenty to like about tonight's matchup, starting with the first chance for Monaco players Elie Okobo and Matthew Strazel to go against their team of a year ago on their old home court at Astroballe.

Additionally, both teams added players with championship pedigree over the summer.

ASVEL brought home no less a superstar than Nando De Colo, whose vast collection of personal accolades is capped by his two EuroLeague titles with CSKA Moscow in 2016 and 2019. ASVEL picked up another former EuroLeague champion, center Alex Tyus, early in the season, too.

For its part, Monaco reeled back power forward Adrien Moerman, a player coming off back-to-back continental titles with Anadolu Efes Istanbul.

ASVEL started out solidly enough, with two road wins on the way to a 3-3 record, but an unexpected 17-point home loss to Zalgiris Kaunas in Round 7 has led to four consecutive defeats and a share of last place in the standings at 3-7. The loss to long-term injury of another key off-season acquisition, veteran center Joffrey Lauvergne, has proven tough for ASVEL to overcome.

Monaco is on the opposite trajectory, riding its momentum from last season to a 7-3 share of second place, including three road wins highlighted by a take-down of Olympiacos in Piraeus.

ASVEL's 71.7 points of offense, second-lowest in the league and 11.6 per game fewer than Monaco scores on average, is the home team's biggest challenge to overcome tonight. That's because Monaco is so full of weapons, beginning with third-ranked scorer Mike James (18.0 ppg.) and continuing with Okobo (13.4), Jordan Loyd (12.5) and Alpha Diallo (10.7), that stopping them all is unrealistic.

ASVEL has De Colo (12.3) as its leading scorer and Jonah Mathews (10.8) second, but no one else in double figures. On the bright side, ASVEL has held its opponents to 3.4 fewer points per game than Monaco, and if it can keep the visitors off the foul line, where they make a league-high 17.3 free throws per game, that defense can make a difference.

One possible means of scoring more is for ASVEL to shoot more three-pointers. They hosts attempt (19.5) and make (6.9) the fewest triples in the league despite ranking a respectable 12th from the arc in accuracy (35.8%), with David Lighty (56.2%) and De Colo (51.7%) among just a dozen shooters making more than half of their long-range shots.

Monaco doesn't make many threes, either, ranking second-lowest (7.6) to ASVEL, but makes up for that by shooting more and better inside the arc and at the free throw line. Monaco manages to shoot more thanks to a league-high 9.2 steals and a league-low 10.1 turnovers per game.

Of course, in the best derbies, it's less about statistical comparisons and what came before than about who brings the fire that night. ASVEL will have the benefit of its devoted home crowd at Astroballe, where the team has risen to the occasion for big games in the recent past.

ASVEL's players will know from experience that another benefit of derbies is a boost in confidence for the winners, which their team can use right now.

This may be a newer derby on the EuroLeague stage, but with many famous examples to follow, ASVEL and Monaco have a golden opportunity to represent French basketball, for all that it's worth, to the international community.

That alone should inspire an enticing Game of the Week.