Maccabi Playtika Tel Aviv will kick off the second round of the EuroLeague on Thursday at 9:05 PM (Israel time), aiming to do it on the right foot. Oded Kattash and his players will host Zalgiris Kaunas at the Aleksandar Nikolic Hall in Belgrade, in what is expected to be the debut game for new center Trevion Williams.
The yellow-and-blue team enters the game still without Jasiel Rivero, who is recovering from a hamstring injury. However, the addition of Williams gives Coach Kattash another tool to utilize in the paint, with hopes for an immediate impact against the Lithuanian team. In their previous meeting in Kaunas, Maccabi, playing with a particularly depleted roster, lost 63-78, but much has changed since then.
Zalgiris has also changed since that encounter in Lithuania. The team added the talented guard Lonnie Walker IV, who has since become the team’s leading scorer, averaging nearly 15 points per game. However, Walker’s addition altered the dynamics of Andrea Trinchieri’s squad: before his arrival, Zalgiris had a 6-1 record; since then, they’ve won four games and lost six.
The team’s second-leading scorer alongside Walker is the agile French guard Sylvain Francisco, who averages 13 points and 4 assists per game. Local guard Dovydas Giedraitis was having a breakout season until Walker joined, going from 11 PPG in the first 7 rounds to only 3.9 in the next 10 games. The Lithuanians also benefit from the solid performance of forward Deividas Sirvydis, a former player for Hapoel Jerusalem, though they rely minimally on offensive production from their frontcourt positions. Overall, Zalgiris ranks last in the EuroLeague in scoring, with an average of 76.9 points per game.
So what allows the team from Kaunas to come into the game against Maccabi with a positive 10-7 record? Primarily their defense, which concedes only 75 points per game — the fewest in the EuroLeague. Zalgiris excels at limiting opponents to less than 30% from three-point range and preventing offensive rebounds.
“Zalgiris doesn’t score a lot of points because of their pace, so first and foremost, defense will be key,” explained Kattash. “We have some defensive weaknesses, and as a team, we’ll need to compensate for them against very dominant scorers. Every time one of them has the ball, we’ll need five players on him, and that’s something we didn’t do well against Jerusalem. We’ll have to do much better. And, of course, against Lithuanian teams, it’s always critical to secure rebounds”.
