


Zalgiris Kaunas went into halftime of its final regular season home game, a must-win clash against Maccabi Playtika Tel Aviv, down 42-45. The team had just allowed 28 second-quarter points, with Maccabi missing just 3 field goals the entire quarter, shooting 5-for-6 on two-pointer and 6-for-8 from long range.
"Thank God we changed our defense," Zalgiris Kaunas head coach Kazys Maksvytis said after seeing his team hold onto a thrilling 68-67 win. "We started to mix our defense: one time we went switch defense, one time we went man-to-man."
In the third quarter Zalgiris allowed just 7 points, and 15 more in the fourth, which combined was still 6 fewer than in the second quarter alone.
Zalgiris forced Maccabi into 6-for-16 shooting on two-pointers and just 2-for-14 from long range in the second half. Equally important, Maccabi's 14 first-half assists were cut down in more than half, with just 6 in the second half.
"Everybody understood that we needed to play better defense [in the second half] and needed to fight for every ball, and we did that," said Rolands Smits, who was Zalgiris's leading scorer with 13 points.
A win came by the slimmest of margins, but enough for Zalgiris live to see another day in the playoff race.