basketball | Wednesday, April 26, 2023 11:17 AM

Barcelona vs Zalgiris Kaunas Best Bet: Barca Make a Statement

Aleksa Drobnjak

Barcelona vs Zalgiris Kaunas Best Bet: Wednesday, April 26th

The second day of the Euroleague playoffs brings us a battle between Sarunas’ Jasikevicious present and past teams. The heavily-favoured Barca will host the overachieving Zalgiris in Blaugrana tonight and try to open the series on the right foot.

In this article:

Barcelona vs Zalgiris Kaunas Preview
Barcelona vs Zalgiris Kaunas Best Bet

Barcelona vs Zalgiris Kaunas Preview

Thu, Apr 26th. 18:00 am (UK time)

The real deal starts today for Barcelona. This team was built to dominate the European soil and the first step in this quest is to go past Zalgiris who have managed to clinch the top 8 spot by the skin of their teeth in the last round. Barcelona have won the last 4 home games against Zalgiris with an average margin of 16+ points. Taking into consideration that everyone’s focus has to be on the highest level since it’s the playoffs we believe a similar scenario will unveil tonight.

Barcelona is the 2nd best defence in the league allowing only 76.5 Points Per Game and only 72.3 when playing at home. Barca will have no injury problems tonight and coach Jasikevicious will have a full roster available.

Zalgiris have managed to catch the last train for the top 8. They won against Bayern in Munich after being down double digits in the second half. Zalgiris have one of the strongest mentals in the league but the quality discrepancy is too big between these two teams for this to have any impact on the final score.

Zalgiris is 3rd best defence in the league, just after their tonight’s rival, with 77.3 allowed points per game. The totals line opened at 154.5 which is very low in itself but we have to stay away from it since both teams are playing controlled and slow offence. These are also the two slowest-paced teams in the league, averaging only over 79 possessions per game.
Zalgiris will be missing T. Cavanaugh due to a back injury while K. Evans is out due to an Achilles tendon injury.

Barcelona vs Zalgiris Kaunas Best Bet

Barcelona will have to start the series strong and show authority. We don’t have a single percentage of doubt in our mind that Sarunas will prepare his team for this playoff push. We are expecting a big game from the reigning MVP Nikola Mirotic who has been playing better and better and is in peak form, which is very good news for Barcelona.

Barca have won their last 4 games against Zalgiris, while the last 3 were 20+ blowout victories for the Spanish side. We will be taking Barca to beat the spread and make a statement in this first game of the series.