Our Beşiktaş Cola Turka Men’s Basketball Team had to say farewell to this season’s championship with a 89-81 loss to visiting Galatasaray Cafe Crown in the third game of semifinal playoff series played at BJK Akatlar Sports and Culture Complex.

Both teams started the game with exchanging baskets but Black & Whites gradually asserted their supremacy through a solid defense effort which prevented visitors from finding any easy basket early on. Thanks to an efficient scoring by Cevher Özer and Barış Özcan Beşiktaş Cola Turka first took the lead and then started to build up a deficit in its favor. This productive performance consequently gave the home side an 8 point advantage at the end of the first period (27-19).
After a hot start into second period, things seemed falling apart for Beşiktaş Cola Turka as Galatasaray took advantage of its defensive errors and lowered the deficit to 3 point (33-30) with 5:00 to go. Regardless of Graves’ baskets which kept Galatasaray at arm’s length, yellow & red team faced serious difficulty in containing Mc Farlin under both baskets. However experienced Tolga on visitors’ line up took the center stage for the yellow and red team near to the end of period and threw in a flurry of deadly accurate 3 pointers which leveled the score at 44-44 going into half-time break.
During the early part of the third period both teams were unable to break the dead lock as they took turns in leading the score. Relying heavily on Graves’ inside scoring from the painted area visitors managed to take a 67-63 lead at the end of the third period thanks to an additional barrage of accurate 3 pointers this time knocked down by Galatasaray’s foreign players.
Entering into fourth quarter with unnecessary turnovers Beşiktaş Cola Turka handed its traditional rival a golden opportunity to extend the present deficit even more. Scoring only 3 points within first 4 minutes of the period, Black & Whites fell behind by 12 point with 3 minutes left in the game. A final attempt by Black Eagle managed to reduce the gap to 8 points entering into final 2 minutes. However, this effort turned out to be too little and too late for Beşiktaş Cola Turka as visiting yellow & red team stole the game with an 89-81 win. With this 3-0 semifinal playoff result Galatasaray advanced to next round while our Black & Whites started making new plans for the next year.