The spirit of the youth determines Barça's now-or-never decision against Unicaja.

Unicaja was leading by 20 points, and the game was decided. With just three minutes remaining, the Palau Blaugrana crowd was booing Barça , even waving a handkerchief at the box and the team, and suddenly all the tension turned to applause. A small oasis in the desert of a game was Joan Peñarroya's team, who dared to say it was "the worst game of the season at the Palau." The coach had brought on the youngsters, Raúl Villar, Sayon Keita, and Dani Fernández, who gave the team a different defensive stance. It didn't even help the score (59-81), but at least Barça found a path to the final in Málaga. "It's catastrophic," said Joel Parra.

“The juniors came out with everything on the court, with the aggression that should be expected of us. They had to come out to raise the awareness of the rest of us,” said Álex Abrines, aware that one of FC Barcelona 's serious problems was their off-the-ball attitude and team play on offense, which was conspicuous by its absence. Added to this was the inaccuracy of their best shooters, who barely managed to hit 20% of their three-pointers and 40% of their two-pointers. A heavy burden to bear.

TICKETS SOLD OUT Unicaja is wary: "Statistics say we win more away than at home."

Everything that happens at the Martín Carpena Stadium (6:30 PM) will be decisive. There won't be room for even a pin. The 1,500 tickets that were put on sale have been sold out in just a few hours, so Unicaja hopes a full house will help them advance to the next round. They have everything on their side, including history: only 25% of the teams that have reached the third game against them in the Endesa League quarterfinals have advanced . But Ibon Navarro isn't confident: "We have the experience from last year of overcoming a 2-0 deficit against Murcia and returning home, thinking we'd already won. The statistics show that we've won more than twice as many away games as we have at home in the playoffs, so we have to know how to use the energy our fans give us and control our chances. That's what led us to make so many mistakes at the end of the first game."

Unicaja is right not to rely on Barça's cyclothymia, capable of the best and the worst, from coming back in a minute and a half and winning in Málaga to losing by 22 points at the Palau just a few hours later.

To achieve this, Barça will rely on the accuracy of Jabari Parker and Kevin Punter, who take the majority of the shots, the dominance in the paint of Youssoupha Fall, who was already the best on Friday against the Palau, and on increasing the defensive concentration embodied by the whistling of Willy Hernangómez by several points.

Fortunately, these are not unknown evils for Barça. They've already suffered them throughout the season and have managed to overcome them at several critical moments. Like this Sunday in Malaga. Now or never. The "early vacation" Peñarroya used to soften what would have been a catastrophe in a year in which Barça failed to reach the Cup final, fell just short of the Euroleague Final Four, and, in the Endesa League , could say goodbye earlier than expected.