Olympiacos running with 105…
Olympiacos played a good game and offered a great show against Rethymno besting the Crete team 105-64. Seven players finished the game with two digit scoring numbers.
Olympiacos got on the floor determined to finish the game before it even began. Dunston and Spanoulis took action and the Back2Back European Champions were leading 30-19 at the end of the first quarter.
Nothing changed into the second quarter. Olympiacos with Printezis scoring continuous points kept leading and the ‘reds’ went to the locker rooms with a 16 point advantage (50-34).
Moon with Papapetrou and Lojeski went on to offer great offensive plays and the difference was getting broader as time went by. Olymmpiacos sent the difference climbing above 20 points with the third quarter ending 72-50. The ‘reds’ never took their foot off the accelerator in the last quarter. Many threes, many beautiful plays, a mature show from the Olympiacos players and a distinctively easy victory (105-64).
The quarters: 30-19, 50-34, 72-50, 105-64
Olympiacos (Bartzokas): Moon15 (3), Dunston 18, Spanoulis 10 (2), Papapetrou 12 (2), Sloukas5 (1), Collins 4, Simmons 13, Lojeski 10 (2), Begic 2, Printezis 14, Mantzaris, Katsivelis 2.
Rethymno (Kalafatakis): Hart 21 (2), Kallinikidis, Koumbouras 7, Angelopoulos 3 (1), Wright 3 (1), Antonopoulos, Kanonidis, Latovic 20 (2), Eziukwu 4, Drca, Gabriel 6.
GIORGOS BARTZOKAS: “We wanted to put the ball in the post. From that point on, the game got into rhythm as we had wanted it to. We identified the style of the opponent’s game, it’s open in the transition, if you control how their players play, almost all five of them play facing the basket. This is something very particular. I would like to wish good luck to the coach and to Rethymno, it’s a very important peripheral team. Wish them all the best”.
Questioned about Vangelis Mantzaris’ injury, the Greek coach said that “it’s not something serious, he bumped his knee against another player’s and had to stay out so as not to get worse”.
The Olympiacos coach was also questioned about what Argyris Pedoulakis said following the Thursday derby. “I made a technical analysis on how Panathinaikos plays and never criticized Mr. Pedoulakis. I made an analysis of how Panathinaikos is playing; a self – evident fact if anyone watches their games. Maybe he got something wrong, or maybe it is us that understood something wrong. I never meant to criticize Mr. Pedoulakis. The pressure in these games in enormous. We know that managing all that pressure is tough. Who knows”.
BRYANT DUNSTON: “Tonight it was a good game for us. We wanted to have pluralism in the offense, work as a team in both defense and offense and I think we made it. We moved the ball correctly inside and outside the basket; we put some good team effort and reached victory”.
Asked about the last play of the last minute of the derby and the foul called on him by the refs against Diamantidis, Dunston said that “I don’t think it was a foul on Diamantidis, I put my hand on the ball and it should have been a jump ball, the refs saw it from a different angle, maybe I should have also positioned my body differently”.
GIORGOS KALAFATAKIS: “I’m very upset with my players. Some other guys got minutes tonight, we wanted Kalampokis to rest, but it doesn’t mean that because we were playing against Olympiacos and the game was following the Thursday derby, we should present this image. We had expected that Olympiacos would react. That’s how great teams are. I tried to fuel the ego and dignity of my players, make them understand how they should have approached the game. Each mistake costs you dearly in games like this one. When you make 20 turnovers against Olympiacos you can have no luck at all. So, that was their mindset, they played for themselves, they went for personal stats, but you cannot make a personal achievement when playing against Olympiacos. I thought that Grabriel would not be good tonight. I think he hasn’t completely morphed as a player, these guys cannot handle a good personal performance, they are inexperienced and young and they have to become better through this procedure. The same thing happened with Hart, who played an excellent game following the one against Kolossos, while he was bad at the next one. We have to look ahead; other games are of interest to us. We have to play Elefsina. Congratulations to Giorgos and to Olympiacos and I wish them the best in Europe and in Greece. This game needs to become a lesson for us”.
LAMBROS ANTONOPOULOS: “We knew who we were playing against. We wanted to try a few things for the next game. We had a couple of opportunities to keep the difference at a low level, but we made mistakes and it got out of hand”.