By John Askounis/ info@eurohoops.net
ATHENS – After a semifinal game that will be remembered, Unicaja Malaga will fight on Sunday against Galatasaray for the Basketball Champions League final.
Even if it wasn’t Malaga’s best game, it was the hardest fought against a rowdy group of fans, who got coach Ibon Navarro’s respect.
As he commented after the game: “Yesterday, we watched the first 12 minutes of playoffs Game 3 against Nanterre. We had to know what we would have found tonight, and it would have been even louder. I want to congratulate AEK on the organization and the season. This atmosphere is not easy to find in any competition in Europe; they have been respectful with us and our fans”.
#BasketballCL AEK is in the house pic.twitter.com/gtvpJBKZgZ
— Eurohoops (@Eurohoopsnet) May 9, 2025
Coach Navarro admitted that it wasn’t the best game of his team, which proved its resilience: “We got a terrible night in shooting from outside, and despite this, we were able to find the energy. We took some risks on our defense to control their backcourt. It’s not about them making 1-of-10 from deep, it’s the 10 shots that they attempted, which talks great about our defense. In the third quarter, the problem was our offense, they got that push from the stands. We have been in these situations many times: when you know how to suffer, you get more chances to win games.”
And that’s the key for Unicaja Malaga.
The defending champions have been together a long time together and coach Navarro expects them to handle any adversity: “This group has been together for three years, we know each other. We got a terrible night shooting from outside, but the best example of what this game has been happened with Tyson Carter, who got four steals in those three minutes. The team understood we weren’t winning by making shots, the only way was to limit their shots from the backcourt. We made some mistakes, but the team trusted our defensive game plan. It’s not easy, and we did a good job tonight.”
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