We hosted Israel's Maccabi Playtika Tel Aviv team in the 27th-week match of the Turkish Airlines Euroleague and won the game 109-77. We were ahead 45-31 in the first half of the match played at Sinan Erdem Sports Hall.
Our team started with Larkin, Micic, Elijah, Singleton, and Pleiss five, the first points of the match came from Larkin and Pleiss and we were ahead 5-0 in the second minute. After Micic and Elijah's three-pointers, Micic also got a stylish slam dunk, and we entered the television break in the fifth minute, leading 13-6. After the timeout, Dunston and Micic's under-the-rim shoots increased the lead to 11 points in the seventh minute: 17-6. In the remaining three minutes, we scored two points each with Moerman and Micic, and we were ahead 21-10 in the first 10 minutes of the game. We started the second quarter with Beaubois' three-pointer and Dunston's awesome dunk, the lead went up to 16 points in the 11th minute: 26-10. While the score was 30-16 at 13:30 with Larkin and Simon's points, our head coach Ergin Ataman took a timeout when the lead was reduced to nine points with a score of 30-21 in the next minute. After the timeout, we entered the 17th minute with a 36-23 lead with two three-pointers from Moerman in a row. Anderson, who played for the first time after his injury, also contributed to the score and we finished the first half of the game ahead 45-31 with Beaubois' three-pointer in the last second.
We started the second half with Singleton's five points, leading 50-35 into the 22nd minute. After Micic and Elijah's points from under the basket, Larkin hit two consecutive three-pointers and the visitors took a timeout at 34:30: 60-39. After the timeout, our team did not slow down and the three-pointers came from Elijah, Larkin, and Pleiss. We increased the lead to 28 points in the 26th minute: 69-41. As our 71st point came from Beaubois, we entered the last quarter of the game with a 74-47 lead with Moerman's three-pointer. Our first points in the final period came from Moerman behind the three-point line and we were leading 77-52 in the 31st minute. With points from Beaubois and Dunston, we brought the score to 83-52 in the 33rd minute. With Micic's and Anderson's, Moerman's and Beaubois's three-pointers each, we were leading 107-73 into the final 1:30 minute of the game. In the remaining time, we got another basket with Petrusev and we won the match 109-77.
