Eurocup, round 4: Limoges - KK Partizan 92:83

What a damn good game it was! We happy, Vincent?

Yeah, we happy!

Did we lose? We did. But who cares? There was pace, there was excitement, there was action and there were amazing tricks.

Was it mostly the French team that provided them? Yes. But they pressured us, too, to run and use our heads.

Apart from this we still (or again) missed out too many chances. The Frenchmen took advantage of it, like every good team should. After 5 minutes the standing was 14:8. I’ll be honest: we were lame ducks. We could barely score, but it was fantastic to watch the basketball parade of Limoges.

This brings me inner peace. There is still good basketball existing on this world.

The first quarter ended with 22:18 and the second continued where this one ended. Lots of running, actions, tricks, Partizan kicked out of its comfort zone, still being sluggish though, but forced to run and trick around. Seriously, it was great to watch, so much that I even forgot about the football game (AS Roma - Chelsea) on TV in the background. Limoges lead, 31:26, then 35:28, then we equalized (39:39), and that was the point when the stream decided to die. After a long row if curses and headaches it came back to life, but it was enough only to catch the half-time result (47:41).

I noticed two things during the third quarter. First was how very well the French team worked with rebounds, both on the attacking and the defending side. (Yes… It wasn’t that long ago that Partizan had rebound-kings, but those times have passed away.) Second that I see neither Veličković, nor Samuels on the court. (First I didn’t mind, latter I didn’t really care about.) Limoges were ahead with more than 10 points (84:72), Conklin was fouled out around the middle of the quarter while Partizan seemed to get weary. In the fourth quarter we achieved 7 points within 7 minutes… Limoges lead (90:79) and had a well-deserved victory. (92:83) We need more opponents like them, that force us to run, battle, play and think.