betprepare.com

Defenses as key aspects of this game

Efes are looking forward to Krstic and Perperoglou getting back, with the former potentially making it on the team today. The Greek is probabaly set to miss this game too since there's no information regarding his health status

www.anadoluefessporkulubu.org

Derby match of this round is at the same time a local derby match. Efes, who are on a 8-3 record, meet Darusafaka (9-2) hoping they will claim top spot from the city rivals. There are so many interesting things about this game - both Mahmuti and Ivkovic were born in former Yugoslavia, Mahmuti and Gordon were at Efes last season, and both teams will be very motivated in this battle for top spot in the table.

Ivkovic said Krstic might be back on the team today, but Perperoglu is probably to miss this game with an injury from the meeting with Real on Friday that saw him miss the game with Selcuk on Sunday.

- I have to say this team is not ready to play two games in a matter of days away. We spend last three nights in three different cities and that was definitely something that affected us - Ivkovic said after the Slecuk game (74-64).

The defense was great from start to finish in that game, unlike in the Real meeting. The opponents had a 30-10 run in the last ten minutes to turn a very close game into a bad defeat for Efes. Ivkovic put Osman, Janning, and Balbaya in the starting five, toghether with Saric and Lasme. Miko Bjelica (16p, 5r, 2a), Draper, and Korkmaz spend quite a lot of time on the floor too. 

- I think we deserved to win, it was good, we controlled the match the whole time - Ivkovic said.

- We now have the Top 16 coming up and an interesting string of Turkish league games with Darusafaka, Fenerbahce, and Besiktas.

Ivkovic's offense was modest in Konya, recording a two-pointer shooting efficiency of 45%, 30% of three-pointers and 12 assists). They now meet the best defense in the league and one doesn't have to spend much time figuring out what will be the key today.

Top table Darussafaka continued their impressive performances last Saturday and we can no longer consider them a surprise of the season. They are playing very good basketball since Mahmuti took over to become one of the prime contenders for making it in the European competitions next season. We need to see whether they have what it take to stand against the top team like Fenerbahce, Efes, and Galastaray and if they can get in the battle for the final, which would see them qualify for Euroleague. The game with Efes is the ultimate test for the leader, who could make this a very interesting game if they do as good as they did against Banvit and Karsiyaka recently. 

Mahmuti has the best defense in the league (by far) that is limiting the opponents to only 68.3 points in the first 11 rounds. While Efes use a lot of energy on Euroleague, Darussafaka had a whole week just to prepare for today. The Euroleague break will make the Turkish league schedule a bit busier and we'll finally have the chance to see how will Darussafaka cope. Good news for them is, they don't have to travel anywhere until early February since all of their opponents are Istanbul-based teams.

Darussafaka are on a five-game winning run during which time they never scored less than 82 points. Despite having the best offense, they have the most productive defense as well (82.4). They are in for a tough challenge today and will need a better performance than the one they had against Karsiyaka last weekend. They limited the opponents to only 30 points in the last 20 minutes, not conceding more than 20 in any of the quarters. After loosing the first one 19-17, they went on to limit the opponents to 17 in each of the next three.

Seibutis and Greer can stand up to Janning, Gordon will take on Draper, and Vidmar, Shurna and Kuqo will have the toughest task against Saric, Lasme, Bjelica and probably Krstic. He traveled to Madrid and Konya last week, but didn't play.

Given the problems Efes offense struggles with, one of them being the lack of players who can resolve one-to-one situations successfully, Darussafaka need to keep their good defense performances up to stand a chance. Just think of Efes' games with Novgorod, Zalgiris, Gaziantep, even Eskisehir. 

These two teams met ahead of the season in the Cup tournament in the second day game after Efes' defeat to Telekom. Ivkovic's team responded brilliantly to beat Darussafaka 89-70.