The 27-year-old scored a season-high 27 points in the Round 18 win.
Bonzie Colson’s consistency allowed Maccabi to control Monaco
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Regular Season
Round 18 of 34
Group Regular Season
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One of the most interesting games of Round 18 in the 2023-24 Turkish Airlines EuroLeague Regular Season saw Maccabi Playtika Tel Aviv come up against the side it lost to in last year’s playoffs, AS Monaco. Both squads had an identical winning record (10-7) and were tied for fourth position in the standings, so a balanced game was all that many could have expected.
Maccabi ended up grabbing a double-digit victory, 93-83, and controlled the game for more than 35 minutes, building a 22-12 lead at the end of the first period and increasing it to 18 points (46-28) a few moments before the halftime break.
Bonzie Colson led the way for Maccabi
At that moment, Bonzie Colson was leading the game in scoring with 16 points on an almost-perfect stat sheet; he had gone 5-of-6 on two-pointers and 2-of 3 from behind the arc.
Later, Monaco made a couple of serious comeback attempts in the fourth quarter, reducing the margin to just 5 points twice (68-63, 78-73). And, both times, Colson was the one to come to the rescue as he prevented his team from feeling any kind of anxiety. He didn’t miss a field goal in the second half, when he added more 11 points, all of them in the last quarter.
“You know, I just want to play solid,” Colson stated after the game. “I thought we played tremendously as a group on the defensive end. And I think that's what the game is about. And offensively, we just moved the ball and we came ready to play from the jump. So, when we do that, we're a special group.”
A season-best performance
By the final buzzer, Colson had a season-best 27 points, 2 shy of his career high, on 11-of-13 shooting from the field, plus 5 boards, 2 steals and 5 fouls drawn for a PIR of 34, also his best so far this season.
He was one of the best bits of news for Maccabi in the first game of a double-round week, when it will face another tough contender, Fenerbahce Beko Istanbul, in just two days’ time.
“Yeah, [I think we can keep this up],” Colson commented. “You know, to get these wins in the double week, we believe we are one of the special teams. So, we've got to lock in and get the win on Thursday against Fenerbahce.”