Barcelona suffered first loss against Emporio Armani with the final score set at 91:63 in favor of the Italian side. It’s been a long time since I have seen Barcelona loosing a quarter by 20 points at any level of basketball. Emporio Armani have made a strong statement with this home win. They have proven that they can go head to head with Euroleague’s elite teams.

It’s understandable that Barca rested couple of players because they have already secured the first spot, but they still received around 15 minutes of action each. This group included bigs Tomic and Lorbek. Gentile displayed a great all around performance for Emporio Armani and finished the game with 24 points/7 rebounds/6 assists.

The result was tight in the first half, but the Italian side still managed to go on break with an eleven points advantage. Hell broke loose for Barcelona in the third quarter in which they managed to score only 6 points while allowing 26 points. The first points in that quarter for Barcelona came after three and a half minutes of play when Sada scored on the fast break.

There were couple of unsportmanslike fouls on both sides in the fourth quarter. Nevertheless Emporio Armani finished the game in style with a slam dunk from Alessandro Gentile and a sweet jump shot by Bruno Cerella in their last possession. 

Both of these teams are through to the playoffs and this was just a mere battle of egos. It will be interesting to see how will the battle between Olympiacos, Panathinaikos, Unicaja and Fenerbahce for the last two playoff spots unfold. Rest of the games in Group E are scheduled as following:

Thursday:
Panathinaikos vs Unicaja        20:30 CET
Laboral vs Fenerbahce             20:30 CET

Friday:
Anadolu Efes vs Olympiacos   20:00 CET