The Turkish side stretched its fine run of form to five wins out of six with a magnificent display against Partizan
Efes rolls on under Luca Banchi and gets into postseason picture
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Regular Season
Round 30 of 34
Group Regular Season
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Anadolu Efes Istanbul showed in no uncertain terms that it means business in the home straight of the Turkish Airlines EuroLeague regular season, romping away to a 65-97 road demolition of Partizan Mozzart Bet Belgrade to squeeze into the top 10.
The result allowed Efes to climb three places up to ninth on a 16-14 record, while it also relegated Partizan to 12th at 15-15 after a third successive loss and the heaviest on its home court in the Serbian club’s EuroLeague history.
Efes, which looked unlikely to feature in the business end of Europe’s premier club competition before the February break, continued to thrive under Italian head coach Luca Banchi after the 59-year-old had endured a patchy start in Istanbul.
Glimpses of the Turkish side’s vast potential were made obvious by the 110-66 home destruction of EA7 Emporio Armani Milan, Banchi’s first win after opening with three defeats at the helm. Now that Efes has hit top gear, few would bet against the back-to-back EuroLeague winners in 2021 and 2022 making the playoffs this term.
Against Partizan, a pack of five players finished in double digits paced by Darius Thompson, who sank 19 points after scoring his team’s opening eight and then poured 11 in the third quarter to effectively seal the game as a contest in front of 20,000 home fans.
Thompson personified the visiting team’s razor-sharp offense as he shot 5 of 5 from downtown and 2 of 3 from inside, although it was the ironclad defense which initially did the damage as Efes pulled away from 16-16 early in the game to a 37-69 lead late in the third quarter.
“The end of the season is near and we are trying to get a playoff spot, so we’ve got to fight in every game and today we played well as a team,” Thompson said in his postgame comments. “We knew this was a hard place to play at so we just wanted to stay together and fight for every possession.”
Having expressed hope that Rodrigue Beaubois and Dan Oturu would recover swiftly from knocks and bruises they picked up in the grueling matchup, Banchi stressed it was all about staying consistent in the home stretch of the regular season.
“We are happy with the performance and for showing such character against a team like Partizan,” he said. “I am very proud but also a bit worried about the injuries we picked up. We wanted to have an intense game and the players responded well.
“We prepared and approached the game very well and were able to stay consistent throughout the 40 minutes. We built this win on solid defense and it was a promising performance which should help us push on through a very tough schedule in the final stage of the regular season.”
Partizan head coach Zeljko Obradovic cut a dejected figure at a loss of words to explain the horror show his players served up in a crunch game, when a win was so desperately needed to keep the club’s postseason ambitions on track.
“I take responsibility as the head coach and we must now turn our attention to the upcoming games,” Obradovic told the postgame press conference. “I’ve never been a defeatist in my entire career but this was a completely substandard performance which came in the midst of a tough stretch in all competitions.
“Credit to Efes as it’s a great team with one of the best rosters in the EuroLeague, while we committed an avalanche of mistakes. I can’t remember a performance worse than this one.”
Partizan will have a chance to make amends when it hosts the competition’s bottom team, ALBA Berlin, in Round 31 while Efes is looking forward to a home game against Baskonia Vitoria-Gasteiz in its bid to keep up the good work.