Two teams facing an early-season must-win battle square off on Wednesday in France when SLUC Nancy hosts Zalgiris Kaunas. The two teams arrive at the encounter winless and knowing that a fourth loss would severely damage their hopes of reaching the Top 16. However, the winning side will find itself just one win behind the fourth place team and in the heart of the battle to reach the next stage. Nancy arrives after an impressive showing against mighty Panathinaikos, in which the French champion trailed by 1 late in the game before the visitors closed out a 70-80 win. The biggest bright spots were the play of Ricardo Greer and Steed Tchicamboud. The point forward Ricardo Greer scored a career-high 26 points and drew 8 fouls in his best game yet, while point guard Tchicamboud made his first start and responded with 18 points and 6 assists.

Among the things Nancy must improve are its bench support – last week the reserves combined for just 9 points, 0 assists and 7 turnovers in 50 minutes – as well as its 2-point shooting (38.6%) and assists (8 apg.) as it ranks last in the Euroleague this season in those areas. Meanwhile Zalgiris played Asseco Prokom to a standstill for more than three periods before succumbing in the end for a 65-60 road loss. The Lithuanian champs were and continue to be without starting point guard Willie Deane, who is sidelined with a broken nose. In his place head coach Gintaras Krapikas has used a largely inexperience backcourt, which is a large reason the club has committed the most turnovers in the competition – 21.7 per game. The club has also wasted many scoring opportunities by shooting a collective 46.8% from the free-throw line. Zalgiris’s biggest strength is in the frontcourt, where Ratko Varda returns from injury to join league co-rebounding leader Loren Woods as well as Paulius Jankunas and Jonas Maciulis.

BETTING ANALYSIS

Nancy will probably miss Cyril Julian for this match and this loss could be very hurting because Julian is all-around player under the basket. However Nancy still has a lot of options to win against Zalgiris at home: athletism, defense, deep bench and home crowd support.. All these already included into betting line and that's why we see Nancy as 4-points favourites in this match. So far they showed good level of play with Barcelona (in 1st half), with Prokom (for 2.5 quarters) and with Pao during whole game but lack of experience and losers mentality affected them in all those games. If they will manage to handle with pressure what is a big problem for French teams they have all chances to win this game even with Julian out of this game.

Zalgiris on other side is improving on the field but still has a lot of inside problems especially with health. R.Varda played first minutes in LKL league after 2 weeks out of trainings but L.Woods was sick during weekend and nobody knows how he will feel hisself today in France. Since match with Prokom Zalgiris played 2 games in LKL with main players who were forced to play for 28-35 minutes and it is a big question for me if Zalgiris as team will be ready physically to make result in the 4th quarter.

I expect very close and nervous game here with Nancy leading most of the time by few points. It's hard to predict the final outcome but I am tending to think that Nancy will manage to take close win in the end by using its home crowd and better physical conditions. All small details plays against Zalgiris in this match but 1.56 is not a price I wanted to see to bet on Nancy.

Prediction: Nancy 78 - 74 Zalgiris

Recommendation: Wait for Live Betting offer on Nancy with odds over 2.00
 

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