Brown dominates as Efes blasts Zvezda

Anadolu Efes Istanbul grabbed its third consecutive home win in the Turkish Airlines EuroLeague regular season by downing Crvena Zvezda mts Belgrade 100-79 on Thursday. Both teams now have 4-5 records in the standings. Derrick Brown led the winners with 20 points, 9 rebounds and 3 blocks in compiling a performance index rating of 38. Bryce Cotton added 19 points, Thomas Heurtel scored 17 and dished 7 assists, while Cedi Osman and Tyler Honeycutt each netted 12 points for Efes. Honeycutt added 13 rebounds for a double-double. Charles Jenkins led Zvezda with a career-high 20 points. Marko Guduric added 14 for the guests. Zvezda hit 12-of-16 two-point shots in the first half (75%), but was outrebounded 19-8 before the break, which allowed Efes to take a 47-40 lead. Efes ended up having a better percentage from three-point range (48%, 12 of 25) than inside the arc (47.7%, 21 of 44) and committed 17 turnovers to Zvezda's 9, but dominated elsewhere, outrebounding the opponents 43-22, including 15 offensive boards, and finished the game with 24 assists and 8 blocks to tie the EuroLeague's season high; Unics also had 8 blocks against Zvezda on November 10.