Intro:

There were Euroleague Top 16 wins for Maccabi Electra Tel Aviv, FC Barcelona, Olympiacos Piraeus and Nizhny Novgorod on Friday (23 January).

Script:

Welcome to Friday's Euroleague round-up with plenty of exciting match-ups in Europe's top basketball competition.

We get started in Lithuania where Zalgiris Kaunas played host to Maccabi Electra Tel Aviv in a hard-fought encounter.

Zalgiris saw Paulius Jankunas produce a spectacular double double with 18 points and 13 rebounds but it wasn't enough.

Arturas Milaknis made his first four three-point efforts in the fourth quarter as Maccabi sealed the win 66-73 and improve to 3-1, while Kaunas fall to 1-3.

- -

Staying in group E and Barcelona were looking to get back to winning ways over Red Star Blegrade at the Palau Blaugrana.

The hosts pulled away early on with a 12-0 run in the second quarter that gave them a 49-38 halt-time lead.

The visitors never really managed to get back into contention however and eventually fell 92-77 to their spanish opponents.

Barcelona too strong and they improve to 2-2 while Belgrade drop to 0-4 in their first Top 16 appearance.

- -

Moving over to Group F, where Nizhny Novgorod hosted Anadolu Efes Istanbul.

The home side dominated their Turkish opposition from start to finish and brought home an historic victory 109-90.

They racked up 65 first-half points, the second highest total at the half of a Euroleague game since the turn of the century.

Thompkins had the honour of taking Nizhny past the 100-point mark midway through the fourth quarter.

They now improve to 2-2, the same as Anadolu.

- -

Finally in Group F on Friday, Olympiacos were up against Laboral Kutxa Vitoria at the Peace and Friendship Stadium.

Vassilis Spanoulis topped the scoring for the Greeks with 27 points

Olympiacos erased an 11-point third-quarter deficit as they improved as they kept pace with CSKA Moscow atop the group at 4-0.

Laboral meanwhile dropped to 1-3 and a share of sixth place.