Turk Telekom fights back to win third straight

Turk Telekom Ankara collected its third straight victory in the 7DAYS EuroCup by coming back to knock off Zenit St. Petersburg 81-75 in Group C. Sylven Landesberg scored a career-high 27 points to go with 7 rebounds and 4 assists while Vladimir Stimac collected 20 points and 7 rebounds and Reggie Redding picked up 14 points and 6 assists. Turk Telekom, which trailed by 11 points in the second quarter, improved its record to 3-3 in the group. Zenit dropped to 3-3 with the loss, which was the team's third in four road games. The EuroCup's leading scorer Sergey Karasev ended up scoring 16 points with 6 rebounds, Philip Scrubb added 16 points and 5 assists, Vladislav Trushkin scored 11 points and Jalen Reynolds picked up 11 points, 10 rebounds and 3 steals in defeat.

Stimac started on fire for Turk Telekom with the first 5 points of the game and had 9 points for a 12-6 lead for the hosts. Reynolds had two scores at the other end and Trushkin's three-pointer made it 17-13 after 10 minutes. That three was followed by a 0-14 run to start the second quarter featuring threes by Scrubb and Trushkin and three-point plays by Trushkin and Evgeny Valiev. After Landesberg finally scored after nearly three minutes, Jarrod Uthoff's three opened a 19-30 advantage. Metin Turen answered with 6 points and Landesberg added 7 in a strong finish to the first half for Turk Telekom, which used an 8-2 spurt to pull within 38-41. T.J. Campbell came off the Turk Telekom bench for a pair of three-pointers in a 10-0 start to the second half to go up 48-41. Karasev scored just his second basket to cut the gap to 51-49, but Landesberg hit for 5 points at the other end and the hosts were up 58-53 after three quarters. Scrubb helped Zenit knot the game 60-60 before Stimac answered with 6 points in pushing Turk Telekom ahead 71-64 inside five minutes. The gap was 76-66 on Redding's three-pointer with less than three minutes to play. Zenit fought back and closed to within 78-73 on a Karasev layup, but Redding came up with a big layup with 23 seconds to secure the win.

Game-changing sequence

The game was even at 62-62 when Vladimir Stimac's basket was followed by a big putback from Sylven Landesberg and by the time T.J. Campbell and Reggie Redding hit three-pointers, the lead was 76-66 with less than three minutes to play.

Pivotal performer

Landesberg was all over for Turk Telekom as he hit 9 of 16 shots and 8 of 8 free throws in scoring a career-high 27 points - 4 more than the 23 points he scored against Zenit in Round 1 of this season. He also collected 7 rebounds, 4 assists and 1 block for a performance index rating of 33 - also a career high.

What a debut

Redding was playing in his first EuroCup game of the season and he came up big with 14 points, 4 rebounds and 6 assists as well as a big three-pointer with about three minutes left and a decisive layup with 23 seconds to play.

Telling numbers

Turk Telekom won the rebounding battle 36-29 and held Zenit to just 5-of-27 shooting on three-pointers (18.5%). Zenit could not take advantage of committing just 5 turnovers.

Next games

Turk Telekom will look to make it four in a row next week at Valencia Basket. Zenit will head back to St. Petersburg for a stretch of three home games in four contests, starting with Partizan NIS Belgrade.