The best Mirotic led the first win against Valencia Basket

The Barça star broke his triple record (7) to lead the win with 27 points against Valencia Basket (84-74)

The azulgranas dominated the game from their shooting success (68% from two and 42% from three pointers) against a very irregular and spiritless Valencia

Barça opened the Endesa League quarter-final play-off with a victory against Valencia Basket (84-74) and can now conclude the series this Friday, on their visit to ‘La Fonteta’. A masterful Mirotic, with seven triples and 27 pointsled the blaugrana attack, which had a great success both in two and in the triple, leaving the ‘taronja’ box without an option.

Barça and Valencia Basket gave the fans a vibrant first quarterwhere both teams wanted to speed up the duel, with the pair of ‘small’ Jones-Harper, who gave Valencia points from long distance.

That good visitor start led them to soon dominate from 6 (4-10), although it was only for a moment since the speed of Laprovittola together with two consecutive three pointers by Mirotic, turned the game around with a 8-0 (12-10) lead.

The Barca, with control of the rebound, it allowed him small incomes, although Valencia stood up offensively with Webb and Joneswhich kept them very close to Barça in that first quarter where Kuric closed it to give him a small advantage (18-16).

Aggressive defense of Valencia

Valencia continued with a very aggressive defense from the 2-3 zone, and began to put the blaugrana attack in trouble, which could not get comfortable shots. Although two actions by Kalinic, posting in the area and Mirotic, once again gave Barça a bit of air in attack (25-21)something that Mumbrú did not like, who stopped the game.

And it is that Barça benefited from the lost balls of the ‘taronja’ box (10) and the figure of Mirotic appeared again, who with another two consecutive triples, he opened the rent to a maximum of 10 points (33-23) putting the game on track.

But after another dead time of Mumbrú, Valencia Basket was in an aggressive 1-3-1 zone that again created problems for Barça and with a partial of 2-11 with Jones as the protagonist (14 points) he returned to equalize the duel (37-37).

Mirotic, who had to return to the track, scored his fifth triple (19 points at halftime and a PIR of 20) and returned control to Barça, although by just three points (40-37) in a first half where the Montenegrin held the team against a responsive Valencie.

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The second half got off to a busy start with Harper taking the offensive leadership of his team (7 points in a row) which, despite Abrines’ three-pointer, was back ahead 45-46. Although again Mirotic took responsibility, and with two new triples and a robbery, Barça opened a gap again (58-50).

Blaugrana’s income rose to a maximum of 14 (69-55) at the end of the quarterwith a highly motivated and successful Barça offensively, against a Valencia that was fading little by little.

But far from lowering their arms, the ‘taronja’ endorsed Barça with a 0-7 run that brought them closer again (69-62) although they could not put fear in the Barça body that always responded and went back on the scoreboard (78-65) at 4:12 from the end.

Satoransky gave Barça the maximum difference (81-68) to seal the first victory in the play-off (84-74) against a Valencia that will have to improve a lot if it wants to give it ‘war’ at La Fonteta next Friday.