This Monday, Benfica strolled through Seriki, Turkey, to the semi-finals of Group 1 of the Basketball Champions League qualification, defeating the Georgian team TSU in Tbilisi by an unusual margin of 60 points (122-62).
The Georgian champions still reigned in the opening moments, leading by five points (5-10), but Norberto Alves’s five quickly began to dominate, reaching the end of the first period with a lead of 10 (25-15). ).
In the second period, taking advantage of the opponent’s numerous turnovers (28 in total compared to 12 for the Reds) and the inability to recover defensively, Benfica, always very good at shooting the ball into the basket, increased their lead. which by halftime was 25 points (57-32).
The second half began with a score of 7-0 in favor of the Portuguese (64-32), the Georgians still responded with a score of 9-0 (64-43), but quickly “gave up”, and the Portuguese reached the end of the third half. period already with another 43 points (93-50).
In the final quarter, Benfica never showed much desire to “slow down” and still achieved an incredible difference of 60 points (122-62).
Tony Douglas with 19 points, reinforcement Trey Drechsel with 18, Jose Silva with 13, Betinho Gomes with 12 and Eduardo Francisco with 10 led Portugal in scoring.
In a team that saw all 12 players score, Ben Romdant and Diogo Gameiro contributed nine, Terrell Carter eight, Ivan Almeida and reinforcement Daniel Relvan seven, Aaron Broussard six and Jose Barbosa four.
Overall, the shooting percentage is excellent – 62.9% on field goals (44 out of 70), including 51.7% on threes (15 out of 29), and 82.6% on free throws ( 19 out of 23) – and superiority in rebounds (38 versus 28).
In the Georgian national team, the only bright achievement was 19 points and five rebounds by Georgy Turdziladze.
The two-time defending national champions are now awaiting the outcome of the match between the Slovaks from Patriot Levice and the Cypriots from AEK Larnaca to find out their next opponent in the fight for the group stage of the Champions.