Wolves made a statement to stay in the thick of top-four race

Wednesday’s vital victory over Hapoel has tightened up the Group A playoff picture

Even with still nearly two months of the regular season remaining, Wolves Twinsbet Vilnius’s 104-100 comeback win over Hapoel Shlomo Tel Aviv on Wednesday night feels like it could become a pivotal moment in the BKT EuroCup season.

After starting the campaign with three straight losses and then bouncing back with five consecutive victories, the Lithuanian team appeared to be continuing its cold-hot-cold sequence by losing in both Rounds 9 and 10, and headed into Wednesday’s meeting with Hapoel in danger of being cut adrift in the race for a Group A top four finish.

Indeed, another loss against Hapoel would have left Wolves two games behind three teams tied for third place, and nervously looking over its shoulder at both Buducnost VOLI Podgorica and Dolomiti Energia Trento, just one game further back.

So when the meeting with Dimitris Itoudis’s men saw the visitors string together a series of double-digit leads in the first half, it was a massive test of character for Wolves. The kind of moment that can make or break a team, and end up defining a season.

In the end, the challenge was met, the hurdle was cleared, and a thrilling high-scoring victory leaves Wolves in a batch of four teams – alongside Hapoel, Besiktas Fibabanka Istanbul and ratiopharm Ulm – separated by just one win between third and sixth place.

As Wolves coach Alessandro Magro acknowledged after the game, finishing in the top six to secure postseason action is a defined objective for his team.

“It was an important win for us, for sure, for the standings, to try to keep the run and try to achieve our goals,” said the Italian play-caller. “For sure, one of our goals is to have the EuroCup Playoffs.”

But the format of the competition means that top six is the minimum requirement, and a bigger prize is finishing third or fourth to secure home-court advantage in the eighth-finals when the playoffs begin.

Wednesday’s win over Hapoel means that ambition is very much still alive for Wolves, and Magro is well aware of the schedule that will see his team play four of its remaining seven games in Vilnius – including visits from three of the bottom four.

“In the second round [of the regular season] we have many home games and that’s really important, trying to have this kind of performance in our arena, beating a very, very talented team like Hapoel,” he said.

The one negative of the night for Wolves was an inability to clinch the head-to-head advantage over Hapoel. The Israeli team won by 5 points, 89-84, in the Round 2 meeting between the teams, and with a couple of minutes remaining it looked likely that Wolves would overhaul that margin to seal a perfect evening.

But the relentless Yam Madar – who ended up with a personal best 28 points – scored 7 points in the last 90 seconds to turn a 9-point deficit into a 4-point defeat, good enough by the narrowest possible margin to keep the head-to-head advantage for Hapoel.

In such a tight race, that could prove vital when the regular season ends in February. But although Magro admitted he was disappointed to let that prize slip away, he was perfectly happy to focus on the positives and look forward to a special celebration.

“Christmas dinner is coming,” he concluded with a smile. “So the joys of Christmas dinner after such a win like this are different!”

And the rest of the EuroCup season could be different, too.