Lucas Sáez-BravoSpecial envoy Málaga

Special envoy Malaga

Updated Saturday, February 17, 2024-22:45

If the quarterfinals had been pure adrenaline, Saturday's semifinals lacked any emotion. If the first semi-final lasted just over 20 minutes, the second didn't even last that much. If Real Madrid was a warning, Barça then raised the bid. The classic returns to the cup final (it was like this 10 times in the last 15 occasions) with two fighters who challenged each other for Sunday with beatings. Rarely have

Roger Grimau

's men looked so full

this season: after an incredible succession of triples, before the break they led by 32 points against a petrified Lenovo Tenerife. [Narrative and statistics]

It had been an even start, but even

Txus Vidorreta

had been left without a response. All the audacity shown a few hours before to tear the host to pieces was now paralysis of his pupils, no trace of

Doornekamp 's triples, of

Kyle Guy

's electricity

. Barça's defense was wonderful. In that second quarter in which everything ended, he conceded eight points and scored 40, for a cup-winning record: no one had scored that much in a quarter (the previous mark, 38, was from Madrid in the 2018 final).

An amazing exercise in choral solvency. At half-time, the 54 Barça points were distributed among the 11 participants, none of them with more than seven. If there was any proper name, it was

Satoransky

, with five rebounds and five assists to his name. Two cons of the Czech were precisely the trigger for the shake. Then, a brutal barrage of unanswered triples.

Martín Carpena gave himself over to the cup fun, to prolonging that wonderful brotherhood of fans that is the tournament every year, to "being up to the balls of Barça and Madrid", although one of them is, again, after the parenthesis of Unicaja in Badalona, ​​whoever is going to lift the trophy on Sunday.

There was no competitiveness in the second half, Tenerife did not get even one millimeter closer and Barça did not draw blood, with

Willy Hernangómez

gaining confidence and putting on his numbers and the coaches sharing efforts.