Gran Canaria 88 - 85 Barça: Defeat on league debut

Gran Canaria 88 - 85 Barça: Defeat on league debut

Saras Jasikevicius' team lose out to Jaka Lakovic's side from the Canary Islands in the season opener in the Endesa League

The first league game of the season has ended in defeat for the blaugranes as they went down 88-85 against Gran Canaris in the Gran Canaria Arena. 

The contest was decided in the final second and the team coached by former Barça player Jaka Lakovic took the win with Balcerowski leading the way with 17 points. For Saras' team, Sanli contributed 18 points and Abrines 17 points but it was not enought to avoid defeat. The blaugranes now make their home debut in the competition on Sunday with a game at the Palau Blaugrana against Baskonia which starts at 8pm CEST. 

Imprecise start 

The home side began well and Gran Canaria soon had a 6-2 lead in the contest. Sanli and Santoransky led the comeback for the blaugranes and Jokubaitis' score allowed them to lead 21-19 at the end of the first quarter. 

However, the home side rallied in the second quarter with Diop and Albicy in fine form. A six point lead was turned into a 10 point lead for Gran Canaria before Jokubaitis again gave Barça hope to leave them eights points behind at the break at 48-40. 

Beaten in the final minutes

The start of the final session followed the same script. Too many unforced errors from the visitors allowed Gran Canaria to maintain their lead. With 10 minutes to go Barça finally found their rhythm and pulled the game back to just a point behind at 83-82. The home side got ahead from the free throw line and the blaugranes failed to capitalise on chances to take the game into overtime to go down 88-85 at the final buzzer. 

MATCH STATS :

Gran Canaria, 88

Barça, 85

Gran Canaria: Bassas (11), Brussino (8), Kljajic (-), Shurna (14), Diop (6) – starting five -  Inglis (10), Balcerowski (17), Slaughter (8), Albicy (3), Salvó (11), López (-) and Mutaf (-).

Barça: Laprovittola (3), Satoransky (6) Abrines (17), Kalinic (15), Sanli (18) – starting five- Oscar Da Silva (3), Paulí (-), Vesely (7), Sergi Martínez (-), Kuric (7) Jokubaitis (9) and Nnaji (-).

Força Barça
Força Barça

Related to this article

Close article

Related to this article