Third game in a week and a half so there won't be too many surprises between the teams. What we did have? We had domestic domination, as I believed will be and we had Basile, the aging Italian star who tries to get to the Final Four. Lakovic has been out of the series and Nicola had a bad series as well so far for Maccabi.

Still, I believe that the home court dominance will continue, since the home court is important to both teams. Barcelona didn't do well on the road in Top 16 and we saw in Top 8 that in Nokia Hall they simply seemed lost. If not Basile, it would have ended up 10 – 12 points win for Maccabi and I doubt that Basile can give such a performance three games in a row. Lakovic probably will be better, but even if he will do his regular numbers, it still wouldn't be enough. The big guys didn't show up to both games, unless you count the three pointers performance by Illiyasova. Grimau also didn't do well in Tel Aviv and only if all things came together for Barcelona, they can lose by less than 5 points.

I believe that Maccabi knows what they have to do in defense and on the offense, Maccabi should do 80 points performance and that means that Barcelona needs 75 points performance to at least get the line. I doubt it will happen and 82 – 71 result seems reasonable to me.



Pick : Maccabi -5
Odds : 1.85
Stake : 8 / 10
Bookmaker : Unibet
Date : 2008-04-10
Match Result : 88-75
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