Tenerife goes from no two-pointers to a record quarter
It took La Laguna Tenerife four games in the BKT EuroCup to set an all-time competition record.
The debutant from the Canary Islands scored 43 points in a single quarter, the most ever in a EuroCup game, on its way to a come-from-behind 94-104 win at Skyliners Frankfurt on Wednesday night. Tenerife also scored 73 points in the second half, a new mark for a second half that ties the all-time record for any half.
Nothing in the first half suggested it was coming. Tenerife actually tied a record for futility in the opening quarter, making no two-point shots in the first 10 minutes. It did score from the paint in the second quarter, but it didn’t make a three-pointer until 20 seconds before the break. Skyliners guard Judah Mintz already had 15 points by then, including a second-chance three-pointer that opened a 41-25 lead late in the second quarter, and Tenerife trailed 43-31 at halftime.
After the break, everything changed. Kyle Guy and Vince Hunter combined for all 18 points as Tenerife took a 48-49 lead. Wesley Van Beck was the first to join the scoring fun, and then it was Marcelinho Huertas’s and Tim Abromaitis’s turn. Both had been scoreless in the first half, and each scored 7 in the third. Abromaitis’s second-chance dunk set the new EuroCup record, making it 59-72.
Tenerife went into the fourth quarter up 66-74, and Skyliners never recovered. The win, Tenerife’s first on the road, improved it to 3-1 and kept it in a share of first place in Group B.
Guy scored 10 of his 26 points in the third quarter, and Hunter had 17 of his 21 in the second half. Abromaitis and Van Beck finished with 13 points apiece. Mintz finished with 20 points, Isaiah Swope had 15 and Till Pape 14 in the loss.