It will be the Lenovo Tenerife and not the Unicaja. Against the odds, Txus Vidorreta's feisty team pulled off the first big surprise of the Copa del Rey when the quarterfinals were dying and beat Unicaja, the host team and on the list of favorites, to meet Barça in the semifinals.
The duel was a repeat of the last Cup final, played a year ago at the Olímpic in Badalona, and Tenerife took its revenge for that defeat. I can give the local team the weight of history, it has been 20 years since any host has won, and also that all the spotlights were on him, unlike a year ago when almost no one was counting on him.
Barça will thus have to face a rocky rival like few others and that believes until the end, and that also has the skill of players like Huertas or Shermadini, who taught their umpteenth lesson. Tenerife also had a sublime Doornekamp, author of 25 points and an immaculate 6/6 in triples that threatened the cup record that Epi, Vasileiadis and Toolson still hold (7).
Nobody can trust this Tenerife, which in the third quarter was down ten (55-45) and gave rise to some clueless people giving it up for hopeless. His reaction, a partial 0-12, woke him up suddenly.
In the final minutes, with equality on the scoreboard, the endless figure of Shermadini illuminated the Canarian victory, in which Kyle Guy also played a great role.
83. Unicaja (26 23 16 18): Perry (12), Taylor (3), Djedovic (12), Osetkowski (16) and Sima (4) - starting team - Kalinoski (3), Alberto Díaz (2), Will Thomas (2), Kravish (12), Ejim (13), Barreiro (4) and Carter (-).
91. Lenovo Tenerife (26 19 21 25): Huertas (10), Fitipaldo (6), Sastre (-), Doornekamp (25) and Diop (-) -starting five-, Salin (-), Guy (23), Abromaitis (2), Shermadini (17) and Cook (8).
Referees: Antonio Conde, Rafael Serrano and Arnau Padrós. no deleted
Incidents: Fourth and final round of the quarter-finals of the Copa del Rey in Málaga played at the José María Martín Carpena Pavilion in front of 10,900 spectators.
