My summary of the
semi-final in the Final Four 2006 in Prague. The first semi-final
game: Maccabi against Tau. Tau came to a game which it knew will be difficult, agains the European champion for the last two consecutive years, but it didn't expect such an astonising yellow perfornance! Maccabi began the game in excellent form with 10 fans that came from Israel to root! An excellent game of Solomon (9)
points made us forget that Charas is missing. Both Baston and vujcic were impressive with 20 points for Baston and 16 for the latter. And of course, the greatest, Anthony Parker with 19 points, all of them in a phenomenal first
half. Actually the game ended in the first half. Maccabi came prepared and
determined to this game, with an excellent defensive game. It kept the Spaniards on 32 points only in the first half and
scored 51 points itself. In the third
quarter Maccabi even managed to reach a peak advantage of 31 points - the yellow crowd was crazed out! from this point Tau managed, gradually to bring the score down to 15 points difference with the final buzzer. 85-70 for Maccabi Tel-Aviv. Maccabi Tel Aviv reaches the final of the Euroleague. The other semi-final game: Barcelona against CSKA. In the second semi-final game, in which Barcelona from Spain met CSKA moscow from Russia, things went completely differently. Barcelona began excellently and it looked as if it's going to be another one sided semi-final. But CSKA managed to keep a reasonable distance during the first half (38-34 for Barcelona) in order to still have
chances of reaching the final against the Yellow team from Tel-Aviv. Willams was the best player of Barcelona, Papaloukas and Smoudis in CSKA. In the fourth minute of the third quarter, the CSKA players ' woke up' and won the third quarter by 9 points and reached an advantage of 5 points. In the fourth quarter came the thriller. A three pointer by Holden made it 60:52 for the Russians at the beginning of the fourth quarter, but a few mintues later it was 63:63. The Russians played a more correct game during the quarter, but two minutes before the end the difference was still minimal. But the Catalans could not
excel and during these minutes lost their place in the final. 84:75 for CSKA in the end! And so it was decided that the final on Sunday (30.4) will be between CSKA Moscow and Maccabi Tel-Aviv. I expect an interesting game!
Published: April 29, 2006
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