The center dominated in Round 7
Tai Odiase exploited Motley absence in big Bahcesehir win
The headline news ahead of the Group A crunch clash between pace-setting Bahcesehir College Istanbul and Hapoel Shlomo Tel Aviv was the absence of the Israeli team’s star center Johnathan Motley.
The big man had continued his strong start to the season with a spectacular 30 points to help Hapoel overcome Buducnost VOLI Podgorica in Round 6, but that was quickly followed by intense speculation about a supposed big-money offer to return to the Turkish Airlines EuroLeague with Crvena Zvezda Meridianbet Belgrade.
Ironically, Hapoel’s next game was in the Serbian capital, with Tuesday’s meeting with Bahcesehir relocated away from Istanbul. And it was perhaps therefore inevitable that Motley did not appear for action, leaving a massive hole in the paint and a question mark over how Hapoel could fill it.
In the end, the loss was too big for Hapoel to overcome as Motley’s absence was ruthlessly exploited by a Bahcesehir team which used superb efficiency close to the basket to claim a vital 90-82 victory and retain first place in the group.
Tai Odiase must have been particularly happy to see Motley’s name absent from the stats sheet and the Bahcesehir big man had a great night as he scored 19 points on 7-of-8 two-point shooting. That haul included a series of super slams, with the best saved for the last as he threw it down with brutality inside the final 90 seconds to cap the win.
Odiase wasn’t the only one who enjoyed himself in the paint, with Tyler Cavanaugh also excelling as he recorded a double-double of 12 points and 10 rebounds, without a miss from the field. Sehmus Hazer and Mateusz Ponitka were also very effective inside the arc, both converting 4 of their 5 two-point attempts in their respective totals of 23 and 14 points.
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So did Hapoel miss the presence of Motley close to the basket? Just a bit, and it didn’t help matters that his replacement in the starting five, Bruno Caboclo, got himself into early foul trouble before eventually finishing strong to record his own double-double with 11 points and 10 boards.
But that wasn’t enough to quell Bahcesehir’s inside dominance, reflected in the fact that the Turkish team converted an extremely impressive 23 of its 31 two-point attempts (74.2%), and won the rebounding battle 33-31.
This also marked a major shift in strategy, because Bahcesehir came into the game as the most accurate three-point shooting team in the BKT EuroCup, knocking down 41.4% of its attempts from beyond the perimeter.
That wasn’t the case on Tuesday night, with Dejan Radonjic’s men converting just 1 of their first 10 three-point attempts. Those numbers later improved, mostly thanks to Hazer making 3 of his 5 long-range efforts, but the final tally of 8 makes on 23 tries (34.8%) was still well below the season average.
It didn’t matter, though, because the one-two punch of Odiase’s scoring and Cavanaugh’s rebounding was more than enough to secure a victory that further underlines Bahcesehir’s title credentials.