Matches like the one that Alimerka Oviedo Baloncesto brought forward (84-78) this afternoon against Iraurgi win over the rival and oneself. The Carbayón team fulfilled the established plan, they had minutes in which they performed at a high level, others lower, and although they reached the important minutes with a good income, they were not able to scare away all their ghosts and ended up losing the basket-average ( in the first leg they lost 94-85) after a couple of errors and some bad decisions at the end.
But that’s a small thing, something minor compared to the importance of scoring more points than the rival, for the players to feel that they are prepared to face a season finale that will be very hard, in which bad times will come, but that Now they look at it in a different way, outside of relegation, with a joy that is pure gold for a squad that is adapting to a very different way of playing, with other ideas in attack and even with different protagonists.
One of them, chosen by the fans after the game as the best player, is Marc Martí, who, in addition to being a power forward with great conditions, is the heart of this team, someone who has had a hard time and for whom all his teammates almost as happy as he himself for his good performance. “I’m finally enjoying myself,” said someone after the game who has spent more than a year injured in his knee and who had just scored eleven fundamentals for the OCB.
The game followed a dangerous script for the locals, with a tight score and an outside success from Iraurgi that, at times, allowed them a favorable score (they went up 16-22 with 2:30 left to finish the first quarter) that threatened to undermine the scarce confidence of the blue set. But no, this was not the day of any melancholy, and the OCB, with a triple in the last second by Martí, concluded the first quarter tied (25-25).
The Pumarín factor was also present there, that fort that knew the role it had to play and did it, cheering, pressing and applauding the mistakes and successes of its players. And, with that support, the OCB gradually took the game at their pace, fast, finding their shooters more clearly and looking for the superiority they had over their rival in the inside game. Imperial was Clevon Brown, who gives the team that much-needed physique, with some spectacular blocks that roused the crowd. Despite everything, Iraurgi, based on triples, kept the game hooked. Only the triples by Thorir Thorbjarnarson (another who took a step forward) and Brown himself made the lead at halftime stretch a bit (49-42).
Some of the blue team’s best minutes came in the third, with an inspired Romeo Crouch, with Pruitt finally finding the outside hit. A basket by Brown raised the lead to seventeen points (67-50) at 1.14 to finish the third quarter. A triple from Iraurgi reduced that income (67-53) for the last quarter. One could begin to think about the basket-average, that undeclared objective that was beginning to be seen as achievable, but the ghosts of a very complicated season came to the team in the last minutes, with many disappointments. Losses arrived and the fear of a catastrophe that caused them to dedicate themselves to keeping the score to finish with more points than their rival. The last play was also a penalty for those from Oviedo, with eight up (84-76) that was resolved with a missed triple by Romeo Crouch when a basket would have served. A lesser evil. The final joy shows that this OCB is very much alive and that it comes out very strengthened from a game that was life or death.
