On the 20th matchday of the EuroLeague, FC Bayern Munich suffered another away defeat. Coach Gordon Herbert’s team lost 69:112 at league leaders Olympiakos Piraeus, partly because Sasha Vezenkov had an outstanding game.
Bayern’s top scorer was once again Devin Booker (16 points), while Carsen Edwards (0, 0/5) once again failed to score. For the Greeks, NBA returnee Sasha Vezenkov excelled with an almost flawless performance, 45 points (18/20 FG, 8/10 three-pointers, 7 rebounds) were a new EuroLeague record for the Bulgarian. In addition, Bayern had big problems under the basket with Moustapha Fall (10), and Alec Peters (15) also impressed.
Without Nick Weiler-Babb, Vladimir Lucic and Oscar da Silva, Bayern got off to a classic false start. After not even three minutes, the score was already 0:9 and Head Coach Herbert substituted his entire starting five. It took almost five minutes before Niels Giffey made the first shot for the visitors (12:4), by which time Peters had already scored nine points for the home side. A lot of things went too easily for Piraeus, and Bayern gave the ball away far too often (7 turnovers already). The visitors were even well served with a 28:14 lead after the first quarter.
Bayern finally found more offense through Booker, who scored twice with a slam-dunk and added a three. However, Vezenkov always had an answer on the other side, who was the fixed star of the offense without the sick Evan Fournier. But not much more came in this phase, so that Bayern still had hope. Ivan Kharchenkov had good moments before half-time, with the youngster scoring a three to make it 51:37 at half-time.
Vezenkov too good for Bayern
Bayern now had the upper hand in offense, but it conceded too few stops. Vezenkov (12 points in the period) often had things too easy, while Peters and Fall again snapped up offensive rebounds. A bucket from beyond the arc by Obst gave Bayern hope again (65:53), but two further offensive rebounds sparked a 7:0 run that gave Piräus their highest lead of the evening. The score at the end of 30 minutes was 78:57, and it felt as if the game was decided.
And that’s how it looked on court. Bayern put its starting five on the bench and conceded another run, leading to an angry timeout from Herbert. Surprisingly, the Greeks left some key players on the court and showed no mercy to Bayern, especially Vezenkov, who hit a few more threes and came damn close to Nigel Hayes-Davis’ scoring record (50). The Bulgarian finally came off with two minutes left.
Bayern now face another important game in Mannheim on Sunday, when they face MLP Academics Heidelberg in the top game (live on Dyn from 4:30 p.m.). In the EuroLeague, they face two home games next week against Monaco (Wednesday) and Bologna (Friday).
