Mario Hezonja went scoreless in the first half but allowed UNICS Kazan to keep its chances open with a really solid second half.

Hezonja takes over after the break

He finished the game with 17 points and 5 rebounds. Hezonja had 6 quick points after the break to erase Monaco's first-half margin, and kept going to give UNICS a 58-50 lead. He also scored a layup off an inbound play which eventually allowed UNICS to take the game to overtime. Hezonja could not lead his team to victory but showed he can make things happen for the Russian powerhouse going forward. 

James, Lee step up in crunch time

James found Paris Lee for a critical triple, and soon connected with Hall for a high-flying alley-oop slam. Monaco managed to keep UNICS scoreless for almost 3 minutes in overtime, and James made things happen with the basketball in his hands. 

In a thriller that needed overtime to determine the winner, AS Monaco stayed undefeated in its first Turkish Airlines EuroLeague Regular Season by downing UNICS Kazan 80-88 on the road on Friday. 

Monaco downs UNICS in OT thriller, 80-88

Monaco improved to 2-0 in the standings while UNICS dropped to 0-2. Donta Hall led the winners with 16 points. Mike James added 14, Paris Lee 12, Brock Motum 11 and Danilo Andjusic 10. Mario Hezonja led UNICS with 17 points. John Brown added 14, Lorenzo Brown had 13 while Isaiah Canaan and Andrey Vorontsevich each had 10 for the hosts. An outstanding Andjusic allowed Monaco to get a 15-18 lead at the end of the first quarter. John Brown and Lorenzo Brown fueled a 7-0 run that put UNICS ahead, 32-31, but Donatas Motiejunas and Rudy Demahis – who hit a buzzer-beating three from beyond midcourt – restored a 35-39 Monaco edge at halftime. Hezonja scored 10 points in the third quarter, getting help from John Brown and Canaan to put UNICS in charge, 58-50, after 30 minutes. Leo Westermann, Motum and Hall allowed Monaco to get a 72-73 lead with a minute left. Hezonja scored down low and James split foul shots to send the game to overtime, 74-74. James, Hall and Lee made the difference in crunch time. 

 Andjusic got Monaco going with a jumper that Vorontsevich bettered with back-to-back triples for a 6-2 UNICS lead. Andjusic and Lorenzo Brown traded jumpers and Rob Gray buried an off-balance shot for an 8-6 score. Dmitri Uzinskii dunked but Gray and a red hot Andjusic made Monaco regain a 10-11 edge. Lorenzo Brown scored off a steal but Jerry Boutsiele and Andjusic kept their team ahead, 13-16. James hit a floater that Canaan matched but Monaco was still up 15-18 after 10 minutes.

Hall scored down low early in the second quarter. Jarrell Brantley and Motum exchanged three-pointers and James banked in a five-meter shot for a 18-25 Monaco lead. John Brown rescued UNICS with a backdoor layup and followed Marco Spissu's triple with a jumper that tied it at 25-25. Westermann and Motum fueled a 0-6 Monaco run before John Brown and Lorenzo Brown restored a 32-31 UNICS edge. Motiejunas scored around the basket, Lee found his first points and Demahis buried a 15-meter prayer to give Monaco a 35-39 lead at halftime. 

Gallery

 Hezonja, who had been scoreless until then, had 6 quick points to tie it at 41-41. Tonye Jekiri and Boutsiele exchanged layups and a red-hot Hezonja struck from beyond the arc at 46-43. Lorenzo Brown hit a jumper, getting help from John Brown and Spissu to make it 54-47. Paris Lee rescued Monaco with a three-pointer but John Brown scored again and Canaan beat the third-quarter buzzer with a transition layup for a 58-50 UNICS margin after 30 minutes.

Motum stepped up with a put-back layup early in the fourth quarter and followed Hall's alley-oop dunk with a three-point play to bring Monaco within 60-57. Westermann scored in the low post and added a driving layup to tie, 61-61. Hezonja and James traded bombs from the arc, then Hall's basket inside completed Monaco's comeback, 64-66. Vorontsevich hit a jumper, Motum answered with a jump-hook and Canaan tied it again, 68-68. Vorontsevich banked in a close shot that Lee improved with a triple. John Brown nailed a jumper, Hall erased that with a tip-in and Hezonja gave UNICS a 74-73 lead with 46 seconds remaining. Monaco got the ball back and James drew a foul with 1.3 seconds left. He split attempts, grabbed his own rebound and missed again at the buzzer sending the game to overtime tied 76-76. 

In overtime. John Brown hit a jumper and Lorenzo Brown matched James's stop-and-pop floater with a driving layup, good for a 78-76 UNICS lead. Hall hit free throws and James added a five-meter jumper, as UNICS struggled to score when it mattered most. Lee took over with a three-pointer that made the hosts call timeout, 78-83, with 1:31 left. Hall took over with a wild alley-oop that sealed the outcome, 78-87, in the final minutes. 

Olympiacos Piraeus and Real Madrid have four titles and four runner-up finishes between them over the last decade, and now they are meeting the challenge of upholding winning traditions while changing on the fly.

Game of the Week: Olympiacos and Real, loyal to their legacies

Each owns two of the last 10 Turkish Airlines EuroLeague titles, not to mention pairs of runner-up finishes, thanks to their mutual dedication to roster stability.

But after Olympiacos Piraeus and Real Madrid each saw an iconic player retire from their ranks last summer, both are very much changing on the fly as they meet up on Friday in Greece for the Game of the Week in the Turkish Airlines EuroLeague.

Olympiacos debuted three players in its starting lineup last week – Tyler Dorsey, Moustapha Fall and Thomas Walkup – as it rounded on visiting Baskonia Vitoria-Gasteiz for a double-take 75-50 victory, the team's first on opening day since 2018.

Real also had a trio of newcomers for its Round 1 tipoff – Adam Hanga, Nigel Williams-Goss and Guerschon Yabusele – and registered an equally impressive 82-69 debut home win against none other than defending champion Anadolu Efes Istanbul.

After tonight, one of them will feel even more confident about its off-season moves by starting the season 2-0 when, looking at the schedule just a couple of weeks ago, either could have been projected at 0-2. Of such inspired starts are new beginnings forged.

But, different though both teams may appear, they have also preserved the ethos of continuity that served them so well over the last decade.

Starting on the benches, Georgios Bartzokas and Pablo Laso will always be linked by their first meeting ever, in the 2013 championship game, a first for each in the EuroLeague. Real led by 17 points after 10 minutes of that game, but Olympiacos scored 90 over the last three quarters to win 100-88 and repeat as champion.

Despite the retirement of Vassilis Spanoulis, three players from that double-title team – Kostas Sloukas, Kostas Papanikolaou and Georgios Printezis – still wear the Olympiacos jersey. Even though Sloukas, like Bartzokas, left and returned, such continuity almost a decade later is rare – except for in Madrid.

In 2015, Real took its revenge on Olympiacos in that season's title game, winning the club's first EuroLeague crown in 20 years at home in the Spanish capital. It was Real's third consecutive try, and on that night, no one was stopping the Spaniards, just as three years later Laso's charges would raise the trophy again.

Still wearing Real white since that 2013 championship game loss to Olympiacos are Sergio Llull and Rudy Fernandez, with Felipe Reyes having retired in June after 16 seasons with the club and Jaycee Carroll still waiting in the wings for a possible return after 10 in a row in the Spanish capital.

If then, as they say, the more things change, they more they stay the same, Olympiacos and Madrid are working on a balance between the two that insists upon continued competitiveness. In this narrative, there are no rewards for tanking, not that either of these clubs would contemplate such a thing anyway. Their pride, ambition and respect for their fans are too great for that.

Their only option when faced with the inevitable – an aging collection of stars – is to rewrite their stories of success. Edit here, embellish there, but start the new episode without throwing out the old script. In other words: honor the tradition that brought them here.

A rock-solid sense of self helps, which both Olympiacos and Real have down pat. The first two teams to play a game in the new EuroLeague back in the fall of 2000 remain loyal to their legacies and to the league they represent. Win or lose tonight, or in any season, they can be counted on to always strive to compete at the highest level. As a fan of basketball, you can't ask for anything more.

Olympiacos Piraeus v Real Madrid (2021-10-08T18:00:00.000Z)

For the second week in a row,  small forward Mateusz Ponitka led Zenit St Petersburg in assists.

Ponitka, Frankamp stepped up for Zenit

When a team loses its presumptive starting point guard to injury on the eve of the start of the season, it could spell trouble. However, Zenit St Petersburg has overcome the absence of Shabazz Napier by getting the campaign underway with back-to-back road wins.

In Thursday's 64-70 victory at Zalgiris Kaunas, guards Jordan Loyd and Billy Baron combined for 30 points and the team had twice as many assists (18) as turnovers (9). A big reason for that was the play of small forward Mateusz Ponitka, who tallied 6 points, 6 rebounds, 6 assists, 1 steal and 3 turnovers while playing a team-high 26 minutes. It marked the second week in a row in which Ponitka paced Zenit in assists after dishing 4 in Round 1's road win at UNICS Kazan.

Ponitka, Frankamp stepped up for Zenit | Turkish Airlines EuroLeague

How his team has responded to playing without Napier, who will be making his Turkish Airlines EuroLeague debut when he returns, was a topic addressed by Coach Xavi Pascual in the post-game press conference in Kaunas.

"We are working hard with a lot of players in this position. Conner Frankamp opened the game very well. After that [Dmitry] Kulagin helped us also. Some minutes with Baron, some minutes with [Mateusz] Ponitka, with Loyd. I think this is something that we are working on," Pascual said. “When one player is injured, all the players must make one step up and to be ready to help in other things and all the team reacts very well. This is why at least we can compete in all the games until now.”

Loyd was the night's big star with 8 of his game-high 19 points coming in the fourth quarter. Nevertheless, Loyd and Baron were always expected to be Zenit's scorers alongside Napier, who is first and foremost a playmaker. The contributions of Ponitka, Frankamp and Kulagin have been incredibly valuable.

Frankamp started together with Loyd in the backcourt and finished with 3 points, 3 assists and 3 steals without any turnovers in 11 minutes. Kulagin added 1 assist and 2 steals in 15 minutes off the bench.

The production of that trio not only gave Zenit a good-as-gold road win, but reduces any pressure on the club and Napier to rush his return. Zenit will not play its first home game until Round 4 – it visits CSKA Moscow first on Tuesday – when it faces FC Bayern Munich. However, despite a tough schedule that handed Zenit four road games in the first five rounds, Coach Pascual's men have come together, are playing excellent defense and now know that they have great depth in the backcourt and the wings that could make this team a very dangerous opponent going forward.

Zalgiris Kaunas v Zenit St Petersburg (2021-10-07T17:00:00.000Z)

### Xavi Pascual, Zenit St Petersburg

"All game our offense was more or less okay. Only in the last part of the game we were not as smart and we didn’t drive to draw some fouls, we were a little bit static. But we finished with 18 assists, 9 turnovers, 10 steals. These numbers are excellent for a team like us. But we were not effective. This is the only problem; in the second half we were not effective under the basket, some open shots, but okay, this is basketball. We played serious defense and this is why we won. We try to play well on both sides. I have to say that in Kazan we didn’t play well in offense. Today we played much better, but we are not effective, I don’t know exactly why. Especially under the baskets, we had a lot of chances to score and we didn’t. I think we deserved to score like 10 points more. Sometimes it is like this. But for sure if a team wants to play as a team it needs to play defense together and this is what we did tonight. I want to congratulate the club and the fans. It is amazing what I feel here. This is probably the most beautiful stadium in the competition with one of the greatest atmospheres. It’s amazing what I feel here."

### Billy Baron, Zenit St Petersburg

"This is a special place to play. This s one of the better arenas to play in Europe for sure. I know how much pride they have in the game, so to come here and get a win with how much it means to them, to the team, to everything, it's huge. I played here in Lithuania many years ago so I understand how serious they take basketball and how tough it is to get wins here. So to get our second road win this season is huge and we just have to capitalize on that. There were some mistakes out there that we made and we just have to keep correcting those and take that to CSKA next."

### Jordan Loyd, Zenit St Petersburg

"It was great to see the fans and play in front of the fans. As a team, we had a really bad showing a couple of days aga in VTB [United League] and we just wanted to bounce back, we wanted to fight, regardless of the outcome. We just wanted to show some character, some personality and we did that tonight. They're a great team, especially with the crowd behind them, but we just tried to stick to coach's plan, play great defense and then secure the rebounds and we did a great job of that down the stretch.”

### Martin Schiller, Zalgiris Kaunas

"First of all, congratulations to Coach Pascual. I think defensively we wanted to take care of certain things on the ball movement end and I thought we did so. Still it wasn’t easy to find offense, which was difficult. A lot of respect to the guys for the fight. A lot of respect to the crowd, which obviously is more than our sixth man, highly important. I thought it was a very competitive game.”

### Janis Strelnieks, Zalgiris Kaunas

“Tough one. The good this was we stepped it defensively. The bad thing was we had too many, let's say, bad turnovers. I had a couple of them in the first half and it gave them a lot of easy points. We have to start over again and be better.”

### Josh Nebo, Zalgiris Kaunas

“That was a tough and very physical game tonight. We competed very hard, but we just couldn’t make shots at the end of the game and that was the difference for us. We just couldn’t make shots. I feel like tonight we competed very hard on defense and gave it our best.”

This is what the protagonists of the game had to say after the dust settled.

Pascual on Zenit win: "These numbers are excellent for a team like us."

During the first timeout of the game in the first quarter, Zalgiris introduced former player Renaldas Seibutis, who received a standing ovation from the crowd on the occasion of his retirement.

Zalgiris honored Seibutis

During the first timeout of the game in the first quarter, Zalgiris introduced former player Renaldas Seibutis, who received a standing ovation from the crowd on the occasion of his retirement. Seibutis played the final two of his six EuroLeague seasons with Zalgiris in 2015-16 and 2016-17. He helped Zalgiris win the Lithuanian League and Cup double in the second of those seasons. Seibutis also played two seasons each with Olympiacos Piraeus and Lietuvos Rytas Vilnius. An All-EuroCup First team selection with Rytas in 2012, Seibutis won a pair of EuroBasket medals and two World Cup medals with the Lithuanian national team.

Jordan Loyd starred for Zenit with 19 points to lead all scorers. He scored 8 of his team's 15 in the fourth quarter, including a key jumper with 27 seconds left and 2 free throws with 9.9 seconds on the clock to hold off a late Zalgiris charge.

Loyd leads the way for Zenit

Jordan Loyd starred for Zenit with 19 points to lead all scorers. He scored 8 of his team's 15 in the fourth quarter, including a key jumper with 27 seconds left and 2 free throws with 9.9 seconds on the clock to hold off a late Zalgiris charge. Loyd made 6 of 8 two-point shots and 1 of 3 threes. He was perfect in 4 trips to the free-throw line and added an assist and a steal, too. After finishing third in the league in scoring last season with Crvena Zvezda mts Belgrade with 17.3 points per game, Loyd is off to a fine start with Zenit.



Zenit built its early lead against Zalgiris by capitalizing on several first-quarter turnovers and finished the game with 10 steals and 9 turnovers.

Zenit wins the hustle stats

Zenit built its early lead against Zalgiris by capitalizing on several first-quarter turnovers and finished the game with 10 steals and 9 turnovers. In contrast, Zalgiris had just 2 steals and 14 turnovers. Zenit scored 10 points off Zalgiris's turnovers, compared to just 5 for Zalgiris. Zenit also outscored Zalgiris 9-2 in fastbreak points. Those numbers made the difference in a game that saw the teams divide the rebounds evenly (32-32) and in which Zalgiris shot slightly better from the field.