İTÜ beat CO Basket 98-77 in the Turkish Basketball League on Friday evening. The home side put together a performance that carried them past their visitors by twenty-one points. It was a result that reflected control rather than desperation.
The scoreline told a straightforward story. Nine-eight-seven-seven, and by then the game had been decided. CO Basket did not find a way back once İTÜ established their rhythm, and that is often how these things work.
İTÜ came into this match off a loss to Final Spor, eighty to eighty-four. They had not travelled to make up the numbers in recent outings either — losses to Gazietep and Fenerbahçe 2 among them. To be fair, they had picked up a win against Kojaeli BSB Kagitspor, one hundred three to ninety-six, but inconsistency had become a pattern.
CO Basket's run of results had been similarly mixed. They lost to Konya BBSC in their last outing, fifty-nine to seventy-five, and had not seen much better form since. An eight-eight to nine-seven defeat to Ankara Kolejiler and a narrow eighty-eight to eighty-nine loss to Final Spor suggested they were not finding their footing.
Both teams sit on zero points in the standings. The season has just started and the table says nothing yet — thirteen games played for İTÜ with thirteen wins, fifteen for CO Basket with fifteen wins. These figures mean very little at this stage.
What this match showed was a home side that knew how to close out a game. İTÜ did not let the visitors back in, and that alone separates them from the teams still searching for consistency.
