After the thriller with a happy ending, Israel Gonzalez blew through briefly. “This time the coin fell on our side,” said the coach of champions Alba Berlin on the success in the prestigious basketball Bundesliga (BBL) duel at FC Bayern Munich. He saw “two very tired teams”.
Alba defeated the runners-up 80-79 (44-44) on Sunday evening, 72 hours earlier both clubs had been playing in the EuroLeague. “January is a month in which we come from a lot of games,” Gonzalez explained to MagentaSport, so both teams “couldn’t have played with full energy”.
His Munich counterpart Andrea Trinchieri saw “a game with a lot of ups and downs. In the end I think that three missed free throws in the last two minutes were decisive.” Cassius Winston missed the line twice, Augustine Rubit once.
National player Johannes Thiemann (14 points) converted a free throw to victory, the Berliners inflicted Bayern’s first defeat of the season in front of 6,500 spectators in the sold-out Audi Dome. For Alba it was the sixth win in a row in the competitor for supremacy in German basketball.
The best shooter of the game was Munich’s Winston with 20 points, the American missed his chance to win after his two tickets at the free-throw line shortly before the end. “In the end we had the player who had the best evening offensively, in a one-on-one. We wanted to win the game and we threw to win,” Trinchieri said of the crucial scene.