Zielona Gora beat Astana at home – 110:86 (27:24, 34:19, 24:14, 25:29)
Top scorers
Zielona Gora: Geoffrey Groselle (23 + 7 rebounds), Rolands Freimanis (22 + 6 rebounds), Gabriel Lundberg (15 + 8 assists).
Astana: Jeremiah Hill (30), Devyn Marble, Michael Thompson (both – 12 + 7 assists).
Story
Zielona Gora (3-6) and Astana (2-5) are fighting for play-off zone: the teams approached the game on 9th and 10th spots in the standings. At the beginning the game was high-paced. The start was in guests’ favor but the Poles weren’t falling behind via downtown shots, in the first quarter they made 4 out of 6 first half threes. Intense points exchanging game led to 27:24 in Zielona Gora’s favor.
🔥 @IffeLundberg starts the game against Astana with the SLAM! pic.twitter.com/SKlMs47q6v
— VTB League (@VTBUL) December 14, 2020
In the second quarter everything changed. The Poles started to focus on opponents’ paint where Geoffrey Groselle shined. Astana couldn’t do anything with the center besides fouling, but he was accurate from the charity stripe line too. The unstoppable Groselle scored 21 points in the second quarter (second best result in 2020/21 season), the hosts won the quarter 34:19 and were up by 18 points.
After the half time break Astana didn’t manage to pull themselves together. Zielona Gora increased the gap by 10 points in the third and left no doubts of the winner of the game. First franchise victory over Kazakhstan let the Poles displace Khimki from the play-off zone.
Hero
Geoffrey Groselle. The American spent 2019/20 season in Astana and played against his former team for the first time. In the first half when Zielona Gora gained the key lead motivated Groselle scored 23 points (8 of 10 from the field) with average scoring of 16,4 points per game.
Geoffrey Groselle: *scores 2 points in first quarter
Commentator: Geoffrey isn't performing well yet@GGroselle: *scores 21 points in second quarter* pic.twitter.com/ayPHtPgcqq— VTB League (@VTBUL) December 14, 2020
Stat
110 – первая «сотня» поляков в сезоне-2020/21 и новый рекорд результативности клуба в Лиге.
Comments
Zielona Gora head coach Zan Tabak:
– It was a great defensive effort for us. In some parts of the game we completely locked down the opponent. Even if we scored 110 points, I am glad we did great job defensively, because that was something that we lacked in.
Astana head coach Emil Raikovikj:
– Zielona Gora deserved to win, they were much better than us. This game I didn’t recognize my team. We must make deep analysis and make some moves that won’t allow this type of game to happen again.
Next
Zielona Gora: December 20 @ PARMA
Astana: December 17 @ PARMA
Photo
