Dario Brizuela, Kevin Punter and Dame Sarr led the Blaugrana to a good-as-gold victory
Barcelona's shooting guards shined in Milan
Article
3 Mins read
Regular Season
Round 32 of 34
Group Regular Season
l
l
l
w
l
w
l
w
w
w
In a critical game in the fight to reach the Turkish Airlines EuroLeague postseason, FC Barcelona captured an 88-98 victory over EA7 Emporio Armani Milan. The winners did so by bouncing back from a heartbreaking home loss that came with yet another injury on Tuesday when Chimezie Metu joined a long list of injured players that already featured Jan Vesely, Juan Nunez and Nico Laprovittola.
Barca turned its injury situation into an opportunity to play better, looking for its regular go-to guys while finding others along the way. In Milan, three of its guards shot the lights out in a critical game for head coach Joan Penarroya's team.
Teenager Dame Sarr started for the first time in his EuroLeague career. In his previous nine games, Sarr had averaged 0.3 points and a PIR of -0.3. Sarr made the most of the opportunity right away, opening the game with an off-balance layup and a basket off a steal in Barca's 0-7 opening run. He still had time to get a layup-plus-foul and a couple of three-pointers to finish the game with a career-high 13 points. He added 2 rebounds, 3 assists and 2 steals for a personal-best PIR of 16 in just 18 minutes.
Barca found even better scoring options off the bench. Dario Brizuela put Barca ahead for good in an outstanding second quarter in which he made 7 of his 8 shots, including 3 from beyond the arc. Brizuela did a little bit of everything in the second quarter: he made those shots from deep, added a couple of mid-range jumpers, a driving layup and an off-balance floater. He scored 18 of his career-high 27 points in the second quarter, leading Barca to a 44-55 lead.
Kevin Punter also came off the bench to lead Barca in the second half, in which he scored 17 of his 25 points. Punter, Brizuela and Sarr combined for 65 points on 11-of-17 three-point shooting (64.7% 3FG).
In a game in which both teams had similar numbers in rebounds (35-33), assists (15-16) and turnovers (15-15), these three players made the difference with their outside shots. Barca ended up making 14 of 29 three-pointers (48.3%) and limited Milan to just 8-of-25 shooting from beyond the arc (32%). Milan had the higher PIR in this game, 97-96, but Barcelona recorded a double-digit win.
"I'm just trying to play my best, possession to possession, and once I'm start feeling hot, then it's when I start to trying to be more aggressive. It was my time in the first half. In the second half, this monster [called] Kevin Punter did his thing and I'm just happy because we won. It's all about the team and today we did a really good job with all the injuries and all the bad moments we had this week," Brizuela said after the game.
"It was a bad day yesterday, but today we woke up with the will to compete with high intensity. Shout out to everybody, to Yous [Youssoupha Fall] and Billy [Willy Hernangomez] for playing really good miutes. Maybe it wasn't shown in the stats, but they play amazingly today."
Barcelona has two more games, visiting already-qualified Fenerbahce Beko Istanbul in Round 33 and hosting already-eliminated Virtus Segafredo Bologna in Round 34. After this loss and despite having a 16-16 record, Milan remains one win behind the play-in spots, ranked 12th overall. It visits Virtus in Round 33 and hosts Baskonia Vitoria-Gasteiz in Round 34.