It wasn’t meant to be. Olimpia struggled under the boards all night long, allowed 30 offensive rebounds, Nikola Milutinov grabbed 16 of them, a EuroLeague-record, but stayed in the game and forced the overtime, where it lost 91-87. With an extraordinary defensive game, Olimpia held CSKA to very low shooting percentages, Mike James was forced to miss 18 shots out of 25, protected the ball well (only nine turnovers in 45 minutes), made 24 free throws out of 26, never gave up, kept pushing, but in the end came up just a little short. “I congratulated the players because they had a great game. It’s obvious, the huge number of offensive rebounds that they grabbed was the story of the game. They were very physical and aggressive, at the same time we probably didn’t do enough to prevent them from getting all those rebounds. We had the chance to win the game at the end on a free throw. It didn’t happen. We cannot kill ourselves for that, we move on with a sense of pride,” Coach Ettore Messina said after the game.
It was a incredibly weird game. Olimpia, the second-best team in the league from three, didn’t make a single bomb in the first half, the made four straight in the third quarter making the game a battle. At the end of the regulations, everything happen. After Milutinov made just one of two free throws, Malcolm Delaney with 11 seconds left in the game made the short jumper that tied the score. After the time-out, Mike James iced the ball, then attacked Delaney off the dribble with 2.2 seconds remanining. Delaney was called with a foul on the dribble that sent James to the line. He made the first and voluntarily missed the second. It was a mistake from his part, because he threw the ball to the backbord which is illegal. So Olimpia had the chance to draw up a play from out of bounds. It was a stroke of genius. Kyle Hines got the ball iunder the basket and he was fouled by Hackett from behing. It was a huge chance to win the game. Unfortunately, Hines missed the first free throw and made the second. It was enough to force overtime, not enough to win the game.
In the overtime, CSKA made a couple of huge shots, a long two by Kurbanov and two straight threes by Daniel Hackett that closed the deal. CSKA extended its winning streak to 12. Zach LeDay closed the game for Olimpia with 21 points, 4-for-4 from the field, 12-for-12 from the line. He tied a club-record belonging to Luca Vitali for most free throws made in a EuroLeague game with no misses. Kevin Punter added 17 points, Shavon Shields scored 13 points, had 8 rebounds and was everywhere defensively. Malcolm Delaney scored 14 points, Kyle Hiens had 11, while Sergio Rodriguez on top of six assists, scored his points number 500 for Olimpia.
