Valencia are currently in 14th place with 4 wins and 8 losses after 12 rounds. Zalgiris Kaunas, meanwhile, is the penultimate team in the standings with 3 wins and 9 losses, 17th from last place in the standings. Valencia had a solid month and managed 3 consecutive wins at one point, followed by two consecutive away defeats. A 73-76 loss to Crvena Zvezda and a 99-112 defeat to Real Madrid.
Zalgiris Kaunas is very unpredictable this season, which is also shown by the numbers: on the road, they fought to the very end against CSKA Moscow, one of the strongest teams in the tournament, while at home they lost to the outsiders Zenit and Crvena Zvezda. Interestingly, 3 of Zalgiris' last 5 losses have been by 3 points or less (82-85 vs. CSKA, 59-61 vs. Crvena Zvezda, 85-86 vs. Panathinaikos).
Zalgiris Kaunas
Valencia coach ahead of tomorrow's game in an interview mentioned that Zalgiris Kaunas is one of the most difficult teams to analyse and prepare a game plan. Zalgiris' coaching staff discovers new weapons before every game, so the players who take the most initiative and the match strategies are different in every match. Šarūnas Jasikevičius has repeatedly said that the coaching staff's job is to create the best possible situations for the shooters, but Zalgiris's problem this season is the complete lack of shooting the three-pointer, even though the shooting opportunities are ideal. Zalgiris is one of the worst three-point shooting teams in the league, and they do it with only 31%. Although players like Edgaras Ulanovas, Lukas Lekavicius or Jock Landale are not the best snipers in the league, you can expect at least average three-point shooting from these players in good positions, but all three of them combined are making just 26%.
Zalgiris leaders:
Zach LeDay - average 12 points, 5 rebounds The center forward has a very undulating game with 6 points and 1 assist. He can often be seen dominating one half of the game and then resembling a shadow of himself in the other half. In any case, the American is one of the team's leaders already in his first season in Kaunas, so the more hopes are pinned on this player.
Marius Grigonis - 11.5 points, 2.6 rebounds and 2 assists. These were the stats of the team's nominal leader before he was sidelined with a foot injury. It is very painful that an injury problem occurs when one of the most important players of the team cannot play. We will not see Marius Grigonis on the court tomorrow.
Thomas Walkup - 9 points, 4 rebounds and 4.4 assists. The versatile defender is finding himself more and more, and Walkup had his best game of the season against CSKA. Although his game doesn't look quite confident at times, the American is getting more and more comfortable taking the initiative, and the game against CSKA was a good example of Walkup's ability to do so.
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Valencia Basket
Valencia is a typical Spanish team that plays every positional attack until the perfect shot, but this often leads to desperate shots in the last seconds of the attack.
"They are a good offensive team, they have a lot of options, they play differently from other teams because the midfielders try to pull the opponent away from the basket. Dubljevic and Tobey do that well, when they have a smaller opponent, Dubljevic goes to play under the basket. The team really has a lot of options, it's very loose basketball and you have to try to limit it a little bit", - about the competitors Šarūnas Jasikevičius.
Indeed, all of Valencia's big men can attack from long range, but at least until this stage it hasn't been their most reliable weapon - Bojan Dubjlevic is averaging 28% on threes, Mike Tobey 29%, and Labeyrie just 11%.
Valencia team leaders
Bojan Dubjlevic - 13.8 points, 6.8 rebounds 1.4 res. pass. Dubljevic is a long-time member of the Valencia squad and at the same time one of the most important parts of the system. Although his three-point shooting hasn't been on the rise this season, Dubljevic is finding opportunities to average his points, as he's shooting better than 60% from the 2-point range.
Jordan Loyd - 12.4 points, 1.8 rebounds and 2.4 assists These are the stats of a guard who joined Valencia in the off-season and whose main task is to create and convert shots. Loyd brings some confusion to the team's game, but it often pays off because it is quite difficult to predict the actions of this type of players.
Quino Colom - 7 points, 1.5 rebounds and 4 assists One of the best known players in Europe this season, he has a rather poor offensive rating with a total of 35%. Unlike Loyd, Colom assists his teammates and creates the game more, so his stats don't fully reflect his great value and importance for this team.
Forecast
Despite the fact that Zalgiris will be without Marius Grigonis and Rokas Jokubaitis, Kaunas is considered the favourite to win. And indeed, although the last few weeks in the EuroLeague have not gone as well as they would have liked, Zalgiris looked solid last week, which is positive. Valencia has never won away from home this season and Zalgiris showed in the game against CSKA that it is slowly rehabilitating and this home win could give a serious boost to get back into the fight for the play-offs.
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