Betis Baloncesto has gotten into trouble (87-83)

Another painful defeat, this time after overtime, leaves Real Betis Baloncesto in a very difficult situation. This Friday, after a long-winded game in Cartagena that featured everything, including overtime and even a scoreboard blackout that kept the game stopped for 20 minutes , they ran out of room for error by losing in the third game of the tie, which the Murcia team now leads 2-1. The game ended around midnight on Saturday night, and on Sunday at 12:30 p.m., with very little time for halftime, Betis will play for its future on the same stage. They are already in a mess, up to their necks in mud, and can only get out of it with a victory that allows them to extend the grueling series to Game 5. If they manage to do so, they would be playing for a place in the Final Four in São Paulo next week, but for that, Betis must win again now. And it won't be easy.

They've never suffered two consecutive defeats this season , and it had to come at the most inopportune time, in a playoff that's struggling, and how, against a rival that never lets up and constantly relies on its defense to avoid losing matches. Betis, with many players in a sluggish mood except for Hughes, Benite, and Radoncic , largely lost the rebound battle (they conceded 18 on offense), but in the final quarter they managed leads of up to 13 points, which they didn't manage well at all. Quite the opposite. They even had two final possessions that Hughes squandered to avoid an overtime that definitively ruined their night.

In overtime, it was a Ugochukwu festival . Not even Dallo's opening three-pointer could calm Betis Baloncesto's spirits, who rushed, missed the shot, and conceded in transition, with the Nigerian center wreaking havoc in the paint (82-79). Benite missed a three-pointer to tie the score and then faced a three-pointer foul, eliminating Ugochukwu. The Brazilian only managed two attempts from the 4.60 line (84-83). Then, after a great defense that forced Cartagena to play 24 seconds, Betis emulated their rival by also taking possession. Incredible. It was the prelude to Betis Baloncesto's collapse, knocked out by a three-pointer from Alberto Martín (the same player who forced overtime) that capped off a marathon match. It came up tails for the Verdiblancos, now on the ropes.

Gonzalo had shaken up the starting five with a short, almost unprecedented inside pairing: López de la Torre and Kasibabu . With two three-pointers, both from Hughes, Betis Baloncesto got going (0-6), lacking much clarity in attack but with a bit more physicality in contact. The 7-13 lead quickly vanished, and the rebounding problems returned like a bad dream. At 10-17, after a basket from Radoncic, Jordi Juste called a time-out. The Montenegrin extended the lead to nine, and Álex Suárez, to eleven (10-21), with the Betis team working without brilliance but seriously, securing the rebound and attacking patiently, looking for the best opportunity. As soon as they stopped doing this, they conceded a 6-0 that pressed García de Vitoria's time . Cartagena defended very hard, but Betis was the one that was filling up with fouls, sweating profusely to achieve an interesting lead at the end of the first quarter: 16-26, thanks to a triple from Benite and a basket from Jelinek.

Benite, somewhat overwhelmed by the physicality of the clash, quickly took the second personal foul, and the Verdiblancos responded to a 5-0 lead (21-26) with layups by Renfroe, Hughes, and DeBisschop . Betis was reading and exploiting the host's defensive switches well (23-32). Hughes, a crack player, got his revenge on a Hermanson triple in the face-off by first stealing the ball from the Cartagena native and then sinking his fourth triple (26-36). Then, Domènech, the former Verdiblanco, became the Albinegros' best source of supply, and just as Jelinek was called for a technical foul, the game was stopped because the scoreboards in the arena (you see, they're all kinds of messed up everywhere...) faded to black midway through the second quarter. Betis was winning by six (30-36) , and the players began to warm up again to avoid getting cold while the technical problem was fixed. The break lasted about 20 minutes.

And the game, in a way, was starting all over again. Juste had already warned beforehand that several games would be played in one, and events, although not for the reasons he obviously imagined, proved him right. Hughes's wrists hadn't lost any heat (31-39), but Cartagena wasn't letting up (33-39). Van Eyck picked up the third foul... and the fourth, a technical in this case for his protests. There was no rhythm at all, and the clock, so slow it was, looked like it hadn't been fixed. The battle for every ball and every rebound was tremendous, exhausting. Just ask Tunde under the backboards , where he put in extra hours. At halftime, Betis was winning (39-47) with 17 points from Hughes in a game very close to the parameters of the previous two, more from the first than the second. He was again struggling on the defensive rebound (Cartagena grabbed 10 offensive rebounds), but his shooting performance was noticeably better.

Hughes , exquisite on the dribble , again scored ten (39-49) when the signs pointed to a second half similar to the first: a foul was called on every attack. And that's not an exaggeration. It's impossible to have rhythmic, fluid play like that. Everything was very tactical, very slow, with a rhythm as thick as paste. In that ecosystem, Hughes and Hermanson were like two free verses, although in reality they only deviated from the script on offense, because on defense they worked as hard as anyone. The baskets, in any case, fell in dribs and drabs with the teams exchanging errors instead of successes. For a neutral spectator, a tough game to watch. Very tough, even. And Betis didn't escape. No advantage was enough. Benite appeared to give his team a breath of fresh air with seven liberating points (52-60) . And as Betis was firm in defense and Cartagena was not very accurate in shooting, the green and whites maintained control of the match, consolidated with another goal from Álex Suárez (52-62) and, in the penultimate attack of the third quarter, with Benite acting as the executing arm (54-64).

The Brazilian, much more in tune than in the first two chapters of the series, had become his team's main shining light, replacing Hughes. Although Álex Suárez was also knocking on the door from the three-pointer (54-67). It was the biggest lead of the game. Perhaps it wasn't time to chloroform him yet, but those minutes were getting closer. Betis did it too soon. His excessive zeal and control got the better of him and ended up driving him to the thinking corner. At 7:30, a Hughes three-pointer didn't even touch the rim, in a kind of scribbled error by the good scribe. He would soon get even. Betis wasn't finishing the game off, even though Cartagena was at its most distorted , sluggish, lacking shooting, and increasingly lacking energy. But they were alive. Betis didn't have much fuel either. In fact, their offensive engine died and they began to live off the profits. It wasn't something to sleep on. Hughes buckled down to put out a fire with a three-point coast-to-coast shot (61-70). Did that knock down Cartagena? Not even close. Hermanson pulled another impossible three-pointer out of his hat to boost his troops' morale and the crowd's noise (66-70) .

Radoncic, who would have thought, was holding his team up in the midst of Hermanson's wildness, a man in a trance. And then it was DeBisschop who extended the lead (69-76) . Of course, Cartagena reacted again and Betis found themselves struggling on the edge after a 5-0 (74-76) run that restored the Cartagena team's faith with 51 seconds left. After a timeout, Hughes mounted the attack, lost the ball and gifted Cartagena another basket, the tying score (76-76). Exactly the same sequence, Betis repeated the play, which wasn't really a play: Hughes took the risk in a clearing, doing everything he could, missed the jump shot and condemned the game to overtime, which ended in ecstasy for the home team, while doubts, increasingly large, loom over a Betis Baloncesto that is playing with fire and will have to avoid getting burned this Sunday in the fourth round of a series that Cartagena is rightly winning.