The chance of the title in the premier class lives: The basketball players of FC Bayern Munich can continue to hope for the Euroleague playoffs.
In the highly dramatic first game of the Play-in tournament, the German champion Roter Stern Belgrade at home with 97:93 (84:84, 39:46) after extra time-and qualified for the decision-making game on Friday evening (Magenta Sport).
Real Madrid is waiting there, which surprisingly lost to Paris Basketball in the other Play-in game. Bayern, who had slipped out of the direct playoff places after a strong start to the season, need an away win in Spain to qualify for the title fight of the best eight European teams.
Devin Booker was the best scorer for FCBB on Tuesday in the sold -out Munich arena with 21 points. In a highly exciting extension, national player Nick Weiler -Babb with an incredible pass through the entire field on Booker, who got the preliminary decision 16 seconds before the end, was reluctant to use several important free throws.
“That wasn’t pretty”
“I still don’t even know what to think. It was a fight victory as we hoped. That was not pretty,” said Niels Giffey in “Magenta Sport”, while coach Gordon Herbert was also happy: “Congratulations to our players. We never gave up,” said the Canadian.
Towards the end of the first quarter, the Munich arena had started cooking for the first time about two hours earlier-but only because the numerous guest supporters cheered a 7-0 run from their team. Ex-national coach Herbert reacted with a break, but the people of Munich also had problems afterwards.
The fans were worried, among other things, because of the early three fouls by international Andreas Obst and Johannes Voigtmann. The somewhat petty line of the referees played the guests into the cards – a later threesome from Booker ensured that the deserved Munich gap at the break was only seven points.
In the second half, the Bavarians finally got rolling – they started a 17-2 run from a strong defensive and suddenly led ten points at the end of the third quarter. But the guests could not be shaken off and provided an extremely narrow final phase. Initially, CARSEN Edwards made 2.4 seconds before the end for the Munich two-point lead, but a defensive error from Edwards also enabled the Belgrader compensation to extend.