Preventing the Baskonia sniper from finding his range proved key in the win
Mijatovic praised his Efes players for keeping Howard scoreless
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Regular Season
Round 9 of 34
Group Regular Season
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Anadolu Efes Istanbul came into the important Round 9 game against Baskonia Vitoria-Gasteiz with a game plan of slowing down the Spanish side’s scoring ace Markus Howard. Efes head coach Tomislav Mijatovic didn’t think his team would do the nearly impossible - but it did: holding Howard scoreless.
Baskonia’s marksman missed all 4 of his three-point attempts and failed to score in Efes’s 84-89 road victory in a battle of teams on either side of the line for the final play-in spot. Howard, who entered the game averaging 12.8 points, did dish out 3 assists, but he did not score.
“We all know he is a great scorer and great player. Collectively we kept him to zero points. This is not a reality. This doesn’t happen,” Mijatovic told the post-game press conference.
It was just the second time in 81 games that the American failed to score a point. The other game came in Round 26 of the 2022-23 season in 7:26 minutes against Valencia.
Howard had made at least 1 three-pointer in 20 straight and 43 of his last 44 games and he was the league leader in three-pointers made with 2.8 per game. And Howard came into the game after an amazing performance over the weekend, hitting 8 three-pointers in scoring 38 points in a 100-99 win over Lleida in the Spanish League.
“He scored 38 the other night and now he’s kept to zero. There are no machines here. We’re all humans,” the Efes coach said. “But at the same time, it is a team sport. Okay, he scored zero, but if you go down the line, Chima Moneke scored 22. Players of that caliber whenever they are on the court, they draw so much defensive attention on themselves that the other guy is gonna score a little bit more.”
Still, Mijatovic praised his players for sticking to the game plan.
“When he got into the game, our players really followed the principle. They were close, they were on him, they were challenging the shots. And they were making him take contested shots. When you play against a player with that kind of scoring capacity you have to do that, otherwise it is difficult to guard,” he said.
"Okay, he scored zero today, thank god he scored zero on us. But it’s still Markus Howard, one of the greatest shooters and scorers. He opened other players with his presence. But our guys, hats off, they did a super, super job focusing and guarding him like that. That was great.”