Strasbourg signs its benchmark victory against the Metropolitans 92

The SIG Strasbourg signed a convincing victory this Monday evening against the Metropolitans 92. Winners 84 to 81 after seeing their visitors reduce the gap in the last minute, the Alsatians signed their sixth victory over the last seven days of Betclic ELITE, which allows them to continue to hope for a qualification for the Leaders Cup 2022. Certainly author of a match with 37 evaluation thanks to his 26 points (at 12/12 in free throws but 6/18 in shots), 18 rebounds, 2 assists, 3 blocks, 3 steals and 7 fouls caused in 35 minutes, Victor Wembanyama for a very long time had difficulty in influencing the course of the meeting.

Marcus Keene unleashed

Luca Banchi’s players made the gap several times. Annoyed at not having been selected for the All-Star Game unlike his opposite of the day, Tremont Waters (15 points at 7/14, 4 assists and 3 steals for 17 evaluation in 30 minutes), Marcus Keene (24 points at 8/15 on shots, 2 rebounds, 5 assists and 7 stray bullets for 19 evaluation in 30 minutes) led his team to success. Taking advantage of the poor offensive choices of the Altoséquanais, they took off straddling the third and fourth quarters to have a lead of more than 15 points. Aggressive towards the circle, Paul Lacombe delighted his partners (7 assists in addition to his 4 points and 4 rebounds), including Leopold Cavaliere inside (9 points at 4/4) or Kaspars Berzins 3-point (9 points at 3/3 behind the arc in 11 minutes). The last comer, Rodion Kuruc (13 points at 6/11, 7 rebounds and 3 assists for 16 evaluation in 26 minutes) gave the lesson to Victor Wembanyama who only managed to score by going to the free throw line.

Finally, by going up the defensive block on all-terrain pressing, the Metropolitans 92 chained interceptions (11) to score in transition. In rhythm and having nothing more to lose, like a Victor Wembanyama who finally scored behind the arc, they came back but did not pick up. On a final 3-pointerHugo Besson (15 points at 5/6), the Ile-de-France residents finally failed at -3.

The Leaders Cup in the sights

Strasbourg thus presents 7 victories after 15 days. An almost balanced record during the international break, while the team then coached by Lassi Tuovi had only one success after league matches. And yet this Friday evening, the GIS did without DeAndre Lansdowne (sick) in addition to Matt Mitchell (injured).

“We did teamwork, commented Bodian Massa at the microphone of beIN Sports after the meeting. Since the start of the season, we had lost a lot of games against the Top 8 teams and we can be proud of what we have achieved today, despite the absences. It’s been on a line of matches since the new coach arrived. We hadn’t specifically planned an anti-Wembanyama plan. We tried to stop him as best we could and he scored 26 points despite everything. Thanks to Luca Banchi, we always manage to surpass ourselves, even if things go against us. He manages to give us the strength to move forward. If you had asked me the question when we were at 1-7, I no longer believed it. Now, taking game by game, we believe in it a lot more. We will watch Le Mans tomorrow (this Tuesday against Nancy, editor’s note), knowing that we have the basket-average on them. We hope we won’t be on vacation in February.«

Strasbourg still has two days to climb into the Top 8.

Click here to access the statistics of the meeting

Reference match in #BetclicELITE for the @sigstrasbourg ✅

???? The highlights of the meeting ⤵️ pic.twitter.com/mFUU8q2A3c

— LNB (@LNBofficiel) December 26, 2022