“Stepped” on Valencia and Virtus remains on course for the top four!

After getting over the shock of the injury Tornik Sengelia in the first period, the Virtus Bologna “pressed” her Valenciabeating her comfortably 87-74.

So Banky’s team went up to the 17-10 and remained in a quadruple orbit, while on the other hand the “bats” retreated to 13-14.

Leading for Virtus were Marco Belinelli and Jordan Mickey with 16 p. and 14p. respectively.

From Valencia, he stood out Chris Jones with 20 points.

The match

Better start from Valencia, who went +4 (7-11), in the first four minutes. Virtus responded with a 5-0 run to overtake (12-11), with the “bats” answering with Jones’ forward for +8 (12-20), in the 7th minute. In the remaining time, the Italians tightened up defensively and closed the first period with a 6-0 run (18-20).

Valencia entered the second quarter strongly as well, for +5 (20-25), in the first two minutes, with Virtus responding with a 7-0 run for the lead (27-25), in the 14th minute. From that point on, the hosts took control and with Belinelli as a big star, they closed the first half at +12 (44-32).

Virtus continued at the same pace in the second half, increasing the difference to +15 (51-36), in the first three minutes. Then, the Italians kept their lead, but thanks to Jones, the visitors dropped the difference to single digits (65-57) at the end of the third period.

In the fourth quarter, Banki’s team again got a double-digit difference (72-61), with Belinelli and Lundberg sending it to +12 (79-67), in the 36th minute. From that point on, Valencia just… called it quits with Virtus escaping to +17 (86-79) and taking the final 87-74 win.

The quarters: 18-20, 44-32, 65-57, 87-74

See here the match statistics