Barça had to practically sweat blood to take a very fought victory against Zenit in Saint Petersburg (70-78). The set of

Sarunas Jasikevicius

achieved at the least, regain home

court and placed just one win of the Final Four thanks to another stellar performance from

Brandon Davies

(22 points, 28 valuation).

Kuric

,

Higgins

and a

Mirotic -

who, in the end, left some details of his quality - also contributed to suffocate a rival that, with an

almost unprecedented

Pangos

, had its key men in

Baron

,

Thomas

, almost cheetah, and

Poythress

.

The Barcelona team exhibited defensive stripes in the first three minutes of the duel. That was the time it took for Zenit to score their first points. Although that yes, it did it with a triple that subtracted effect to the six accumulated until then by the Barcelona. Chained perhaps by the almost obligation to take the victory, Jasikevicius's pulse trembled at the most inopportune moments. Something that Poythress, all thrust, took advantage of to turn things around and force to a large extent that Kuric, with a shot of three in extremis, could only sign the tie (16-16) at the end of the first quarter.

The Russian team, emboldened by the claw of Poythress, started the second period with force and even went away by seven points against a rival who both the strong physical component of the locals and some arbitration decision came to unhinge him.

But just then, when things were getting worse again, it was the appearance of Davies that allowed them to raise their heads again.

The one from Philadelphia, in three consecutive actions, danced in the zone to score with a one-handed dunk, blocked an action from

Hollins

and converted a triple to put the Catalans slightly above (30-31).

Equal rest

The tie, scored by a Pangos only capable of scoring from the free throw line in this first half, was followed by a triple by

Calathes

that placed his team with a partial 1-11 and a momentary 31-34 than the Canadian , after staff of

Sergi Martínez

, would leave at 33-34 to send the duel to rest.

Baron, in the resumption, was in charge of avoiding as much as possible that Zenit missed the game prematurely while Davies continued his work and, with Kuric, Higgins and a Mirotic at last appeared, he tried to keep his distance.

The game reached the last period with another slight advantage for Barcelona (51-55) that, little by little, those of Jasikevicius came to convert into a gap of 10 points (66-76).

Pangos had to spend a good time in the locker room because of a spectacular brow gap that had Davies and Poythress as unwitting culprits.

Zenit got into bonus very early, lost by five fouls precisely to Poythress himself and saw how the errors in attack accumulated at the most inopportune moment to open the way to a very hard-working Barça victory at the end (70-78 ).

According to the criteria of The Trust Project

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See links of interest

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