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ULEB Euroleague Groups / Standings Towers Schedule Season Results ULEB.net
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Haribo London Towers slipped to a 82-97 defeat at the hands of FC Barcelona on Wednesday night in the Euroleague, despite a spirited display at Crystal Palace.
The Towers trailed fell behind early on, as the Blaugrana outfit sped into a 13-21 lead at the end of the opening quarter. Their advantage increased to 15 at half-time but Nick Nurse's side fought back, a 6-0 burst seeing them trail just 56-61 with 12 minutes left.
They reduced the gap to only 4 points at 61-65, thanks to Eric Taylor who scored 12 points in that period.
Towers though lost Kendrick Warren and Tom Wideman to foul trouble as Barcelona Spaniards found another gear and closed out the victory, despite an unimpressive zero points in 11 minutes contribution from their $2 million dollar man Rony Seikaly.
Steve Bucknall had 25 points for the Towers and Arturas Karnisovas had 27 for the visitors, Francisco Elson adding 22 points and 10 rebounds.
"I was really proud of my guys," said Nurse. "I don't like playing close and
losing, even against the best. That's a nasty kind of feel just to get into. I was proud that although we had a rough patch in the second quarter, we bounced right back at the start of the second half and really had them nervous."I thought we did a nice job of doing what we wanted to do - we were physical, made them work, took good shots, and played kind of recklessly at the offensive end. I'm just disappointed we didn't get the win, but proud of how we played for about 25 minutes."
Nurse has no complaints however about his team's tough schedule.
"We've got to play Milton Keynes in a top of the table game on Saturday, and then we play Ural Great of Russia on Monday in the NEBL, before we meet PAOK on Wednesday. It"s okay. It's a good learning experience for us. That's what we've got to do, we've got to really learn, we've got to grow, we've got to play tough, and we've got to try and get better as the season goes on.
"This is going to help us somewhere down the line. It may not be in the Euroleague, but maybe in the NEBL or maybe it'll be in England. That's what we've got to do - we've got to make sure we learn our lessons from this."
Elsewhere in Group D, PAOK's unbeaten run came to an end when the Greek side were beaten 83-71 by Buducnost in Yugoslavia. Frankfurt still prop up the standings with no wins in four starts after their 80-97 home loss to Verona.
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