NBA Europe Live report: Estudiantes 73-98 Memphis
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 The Memphis Grizzlies made sure very early that their second NBA Europe Live game would be a victory when they ran away from MMT Estudiantes by 73-98 on Thursday at the Sports Palace in Madrid, Spain. Memphis shot ahead by double digits less than 5 minutes into the game and never looked back the rest of the way, leading by over 30 points on some occasions. Darko Milicic led the winners with 13 points, while Mike Miller and Casey Jacobsen added 11 each and Pau Gasol 10. A total of 15 different Grizzlies scored in the game. Hernan Jasen led Estudiantes with 17 points while Larry Lewis added 14.
Damon Stoudamire went coast-to-coast for a pair of layups for Memphis while Lewis and Jasen dropped jumpers for Estudiantes to get the scoreboard rolling. Miller soon picked up 6 points in a row as the Memphis lead climbed to 4-11. After an Estudiantes timeout, Sergio Sanchez hit a three-pointer for the hosts, but the points kept coming for Memphis until Miller's second triple and an inside basket by Marko Milicic made it 9-26. Javier Beiran stopped the slide for Estudiantes right before Juan Carlos Navarro came on for Memphis and pleased the Spanish crowd with a driving layup at 11-28. The trend continued as two more substitutes, Brian Cardinal and Kyle Lowry, took Memphis ahead by 11-32 after a quarter.
Terrance Kinsey started the second-quarter scoring for Memphis and Gasol continued it. Estuduantes finally got a jumper for Caio Torres, a reverse layup from Carlos Suarez and a layup from Jasen, but by that time Memphis was way up, 17-40. Jasen cut the difference with a triple to 25-44 and Lewis added 4 points of his own. Estudiantes was able to match Memphis basket for basket starting then, with Lewis and Jasen getting help from Txemi Urtasun and Daniel Clark, but matching was not good enough to keep Memphis from rolling to a 33-52 advantage at halftime.
 The second half went like the first, with Memphis scoring almost at will. Rudy Gay was the protagonist early in the quarter for the Grizzlies, while Gasol, Jacobsen and Milicic kept up a pace that was now beyond what Estudiantes could make up. The lead hit a new high of 48-73 before Beiran gave the fans a triple to cheer about. The Memphis defense otherwise kept things under control as the score showed 52-80 after 36 minutes.
The pace slowed in the fourth quarter, when the outcome was more than decided. For most of the 12 minutes, the Madrid fans waited to cheer for Navarro, even when he just touched the ball. When he knocked down an outside shot midway through the quarter it was 58-89. Estudiantes spent the rest of the time trying to make the scorebard look better while Memphis contented itself with finishing NBA Europe Live with a 1-1 record after having lost to Unicaja in Malaga two nights earlier.
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Thursday, October 11, 2007
Euroleague.net
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