Valencia routed Barça at the Palau Blaugrana and sent a strong message ahead of the playoffs
Valencia Basket concluded the league part of the season in Spain with one of the most convincing performances of the entire final stretch of the regular season. In the game played on 31 May 2026 at the Palau Blaugrana in Barcelona, the team coached by Pedro Martínez defeated Barça 102:77 and, with a 25-point victory, confirmed second place ahead of the Liga Endesa playoffs. According to ACB’s official announcement, that result is also Valencia’s biggest win at the Palau Blaugrana in Spanish championship games. The matchup had direct competitive significance because it determined the order near the top of the standings, and the outcome gave the visitors home-court advantage at least in the quarter-finals and, if they advance further, in the semi-finals.
Barça entered the game with the possibility of improving its position before the playoffs, but already in the first quarter it lost control of the game. Valencia imposed its rhythm, quickly punished the home team’s slow defensive reactions and led 28:14 after ten minutes. According to the official ACB Live box score, the visitors continued to increase their lead by quarters, 18:13, 29:26 and 27:24, so the final result was not the consequence of one short run, but of Valencia’s constant advantage throughout almost the entire game. Barça, according to the same statistics, led for only 30 seconds, while Valencia spent 37 minutes and 42 seconds in the lead, which clearly shows the balance of power on the court.
Valencia’s early breakaway shaped the game
The key part of the game happened already in the opening minutes. Valencia, according to the club report, started in line with its recognizable style of high speed, aggressive ball movement and quick search for advantages in transition. After an initial exchange of baskets, there followed a run with which the visitors pulled away to 15:6, and Jean Montero quickly became the player who forced the home defense into constant adjustments. Xavi Pascual had to stop play with a timeout already in the first quarter, but that did not change the basic direction of the game. Valencia ended the first period with twice as many points as Barça, 28:14, and opened the way to controlling the contest.
In the second quarter, the home side tried to find a response through physical play and rebounding, especially through Joel Parra, but the difference was not seriously threatened. According to Valencia’s report, Álvaro Cárdenas took the visitors to 37:19 with a layup, and a brief Barça reaction reduced the deficit to 37:25. Pedro Martínez then stopped the game to stabilize his team, and the visitors’ response was quick and effective. Matt Costello and Kameron Taylor, according to the club’s description of the game, took over the offensive initiative late in the half, so Valencia went into the break at 46:27 and with an advantage that already seemed difficult to reach.
The statistics confirmed the visiting team’s complete control
The official ACB Live statistics show why the difference was so large. Valencia shot 37/70 from the field, or 52.86 percent, while Barça finished at 31/65, or 47.69 percent. The difference in three-point shooting was especially important: the visitors made 15 of 32 attempts, almost 47 percent, while the home team remained at 7/19. Valencia also had twice as many assists, 18 to 9, which points to better ball movement and clearer offensive decisions. The rebounding difference was not large, 37 to 35 for Valencia, but the visiting team punished almost every home mistake or loss of balance with a quick and organized attack.
Jean Montero finished the game as Valencia’s leading scorer with 19 points, and the official ACB Live also records his important role in organizing play with four assists. Sergio de Larrea added 12 points, five rebounds and four assists, while Kameron Taylor scored 11, and Jaime Pradilla and Matt Costello had 10 points each. The contribution was spread across almost the entire rotation, which allowed the visitors not to lose intensity even when they changed lineups. For Barça, Tornike Shengelia stood out most with 17 points and five rebounds, while Darío Brizuela scored 9, Joel Parra 8, and Willy Hernangómez and Will Clyburn 7 points each. Such a distribution of production shows that the home side did not have a player who could carry the offense for a longer period or break the rhythm of the contest.
The third quarter did not bring a comeback, although Barça were somewhat more fluid offensively than in the first half. Valencia answered every home attempt with shooting from outside, and according to the club report, it was precisely Cárdenas, De Larrea and Omari Moore who made important three-pointers during the period in which Barcelona tried to change the energy of the game. After 30 minutes the score was 75:53 for the visitors. The final quarter turned into a confirmation of the victory, because Valencia did not allow a run that would have made the game uncertain. The biggest difference, according to ACB Live, was 26 points, and the final 102:77 remained only minimally below that highest advantage.
A record victory in Barcelona and second place in the regular season
After the game, ACB emphasized that with this victory Valencia reached its 25th league triumph and second position after the regular season. The same source states that Barça and Valencia had met 43 times in Barcelona in Liga Endesa games before this contest, counting the Palau Blaugrana and the Sant Jordi arena, and that Barça had won 31 of those 43 games. Of Valencia’s previous 12 victories in Barcelona, only one had been achieved by more than ten points, in 2014 in the semi-final series when Valencia won 81:63. That is why the 102:77 victory is especially significant in the historical context of head-to-head meetings, because it is Valencia’s most convincing away performance on that court in championship games.
For Valencia, the result also has immediate sporting value. According to the club’s official announcement, the team will play against Surne Bilbao Basket in the playoff quarter-finals, and the first game is scheduled for Wednesday at 19:00 at Roig Arena. The series is played to two wins, which means that home-court advantage in the first phase is extremely important. Valencia, along with second place, avoided the possibility of an earlier meeting with Real Madrid before a possible final, something Spanish media also emphasized in their reports. For Pedro Martínez’s team, this is especially important after a demanding end to the season, in which parallel European and domestic challenges affected the schedule and the players’ workload.
Pedro Martínez, after the game, according to Valencia’s announcement, emphasized that his team opened the contest well in defense and attack, and then maintained a good rhythm through ball movement. That assessment describes well what could be seen through the statistics: Valencia did not win only with better shooting, but also with a clearer game structure. The visitors had more assists, better three-point shooting, a more stable rotation and fewer periods in which they seemed without a plan. In a game with high stakes, such a combination is often decisive, and at the Palau Blaugrana it turned into a difference that grew to 25 points by the end.
Barça remained fifth and without home-court advantage
For Barça, the defeat came at the most unpleasant moment. According to FC Barcelona’s official website, the team had a few days earlier been winning at the end of the regular season against MoraBanc Andorra, La Laguna Tenerife and Covirán Granada, so the game against Valencia was supposed to be an opportunity to confirm a good entry into the playoffs. Instead, the team finished the league part in fifth place and goes to UCAM Murcia in the quarter-finals without home-court advantage. According to the El País report and official ACB information, the quarter-final pairings are Real Madrid against La Laguna Tenerife, Valencia Basket against Surne Bilbao Basket, UCAM Murcia against Barça, and Kosner Baskonia against Asis Joventut.
Xavi Pascual did not soften his assessment of his team’s performance after the defeat. According to the EFE agency report carried by AS, the Barça coach said that his team played its worst ACB game of the season and that the performance was very poor in all segments of the game. Pascual, according to the same source, took responsibility and stressed that the team must react mentally very quickly because the playoffs begin almost immediately. Such a reaction from the coach is not surprising given the manner of the defeat: Barça did not lose in the closing stages or because of one poor offensive period, but was behind from the beginning, and defensively it did not find an answer to the speed and breadth of Valencia’s offense.
It was especially worrying for Barça that the game was played in front of its home crowd at the Palau Blaugrana. According to the EFE report carried by Cadena SER, 4,703 spectators attended the match, and the home players were sent off with dissatisfaction from the stands. The same report states that Jan Vesely received an award and a framed jersey for his career, since he is retiring at the end of the season. That ceremonial moment did not change the general impression of the evening for the home side, because the sporting result remained extremely unfavorable and opened a series of questions about the state of the team before the series with UCAM Murcia.
The playoffs begin with different moods for the two teams
Valencia enters the playoffs with one of the strongest possible signals. Victory in Barcelona, second place and a historically high 25-point margin give the team additional confidence, but at the same time increase expectations. Surne Bilbao Basket comes as an opponent that finished the regular season in the playoffs after a valuable closing stretch of the season, so Valencia will have no room to relax. In a best-of-three series, one poor performance can change everything, especially if an away break is allowed already in the first game. Still, the way Pedro Martínez’s team controlled the game at the Palau Blaugrana shows that Valencia enters the final stretch with a clear identity and a very broad offensive repertoire.
Barça, on the other hand, must quickly improve the impression and find the level of concentration that it lacked against Valencia. The series against UCAM Murcia will not be simple because Murcia has home-court advantage and finished the regular season ahead of the Catalan team. For Barça, defensive intensity, better offensive organization and greater stability in moments when the opponent makes a run will be especially important. The 77:102 defeat does not have to define the playoffs by itself, but the way it happened leaves little room to ignore the problems. At the Palau Blaugrana, Valencia showed how quickly a game can get out of control if the opponent is allowed rhythm, outside shooting and easy ball distribution.
At the end of the regular season, this game remains recorded as a result with double weight. Valencia achieved away from home the biggest victory in its history of league appearances in Barcelona and completed the standings in second place. Barça, by contrast, suffered a heavy home defeat in the last test before the playoffs and remained without home-court advantage in the quarter-finals. In a competition in which series are often decided by nuances, the difference between the confidence with which Valencia enters the rest of the season and the questions now facing Barça could be just as important as the 25-point difference itself on the scoreboard.
Sources:
– ACB – official announcement about Valencia’s record victory at the Palau Blaugrana and the final regular-season standings (link)
– ACB Live – official game box score, score by quarters, team and player statistics (link)
– Valencia Basket – club report on the 102:77 victory and announcement of the quarter-final series against Surne Bilbao Basket (link)
– FC Barcelona – official page with the basketball team’s results in the 2025/2026 season (link)
– Cadena SER / EFE – match report, context of the game, attendance and reactions from the Palau Blaugrana (link)
– AS / EFE – Xavi Pascual’s statement after Barça’s defeat and the context of entering the playoffs (link)
