At table football, Asvel should have followed tradition: go under the table. This is the punishment reserved for the loser ten to zero in a game. Because Monegasque’s invincibility against Villeurbanne now stands in double figures after the defeat Thursday evening at the LDLC Arena (87-77).
The new showcase of the club chaired by Tony Parker was not enough to quell the curse in progress since June 2022 and match 5 of the Championship final won at the Astroballe. But in front of 8,900 spectators, Pierric Poupet’s players long believed they would break this black streak. The bays exploded seeing the Paris Lee-Mbaye Ndiaye high-speed connection deliver two fantastic alley-oops (50-61, 27th).
Okobo decisive
Furious, Sasa Obradovic was already drawing his penultimate timeout. A breather minute for his troops, a few meters from the owner of the Roca Team, Aleksey Fedorychev, present in the Rhône against a team of which he has become both the main sponsor and a main thorn in the side with financial difficulties of Skweek.
Élie Okobo (16 points) then put on the costume of the player taking out the instruments of torture against his former club. With two three-point strings, the MVP of the 2022 Championship final calmed the room and put an end to the distress of his team behind the arc (0 out of 14 to start).
“Elie changed the game for us,” agreed Obradovic. Then, we made the break with a big defense. » The seven lengths lead on the Asvel side (56-63, 31st) did not hold up when Monaco found the last notch of its gear lever, the one which very often makes it unplayable in Europe. A cocktail of toughness and patience.
Asvel cracks at the end of the match
“They are a better team than us today (Thursday). They have all the balls 50-50 and they do the right things at the end,” said Timothé Luwawu-Cabarrot, very prominent (23 points, 7 rebounds) under the eyes of coach Vincent Collet.
Monegasque aggression caused Nando De Colo to lose his pin until an altercation with Alpha Diallo, sanctioned by an unsportsmanlike foul punished by two throws from Diallo and a floater from Okobo (80-71, 38th). After an incredible basket plus the foul from the sidelines behind the halfway line before the break, the leader of Asvel (9 points) remained silent.
His place as runner-up in the ranking of the best scorers in Euroleague history, behind Mike James and ahead of Vassilis Spanoulis will have to wait. “The ten defeats in a row against Monaco are not a subject. This is not the group that has lost ten times in a row. We have a lot of difficult matches ahead of us to prove that we deserve to play them again (in the Championship play-offs),” Pierric Poupet projected.
Despite the provisional second place in the Euroleague rankings and a step closer to home advantage in the quarter-finals, Obradovic kept a bitter taste in his mouth: “We have to be more consistent, we can’t be rest on this scenario, these comebacks, in the future. »
2024-03-28 22:58:16
#Stunning #Monaco #wins #Asvel #Euroleague
