The core sentence was somewhat lost in the general exhaustion that the contested duel and, above all, the unnecessarily nerve-wracking finish had left behind: "A victory is a victory and this is a very important one," said Andrea Trinchieri late Wednesday evening in the media center of the BayWa Pavilion and no one contradicted him. That's because the 81-78 win over the Ludwigsburg Giants gave the Cup winners a 2-1 lead in the playoff semifinals and could send them to the German championship finals on Friday night with a win.
MagentaSport will broadcast from the Audi Dome starting at 20:15., and Game 4 will also be shown again in the "Kino am Olympiasee". Admission to the public viewing starts at 19:30 (Tickets nur online: www.kinoamolympiasee.de), Corona tests are not required.
Trinchieri had to acknowledge about the opponent that "they never give up,". From 71-60 after Wade Baldwin's three-pointer four and a half minutes before the end, his men still allowed themselves four of their 16 turnovers and let it get all the way to 79-78 (12 seconds).
A look at the history shows that the Munich team does not have an easy task: In the past decade, the top team in the regular BBL season has only once failed to make it past the playoff semifinals and miss the BBL finals (Ulm 2017).
However, from the point of view of the regular season, fourth-placed FCBB, the effort is as important as any stats for a team which played its 85th must-win game since the beginning of October on Wednesday: except for turnovers (16-10), the hosts were ahead in the relevant categories; they won the rebound duel (39-35), dished out more assists (21-15) and had the better shooting rate (44 to 39%), with threes continuing to be a strong best among all playoff teams with a good 46%.
