11-0 and going on
Olympiacos edged Panelefsiniakos on the road 94-76 for the 11th day of the League, without even stepping on the gas and reached an 11-0 record remaining alone and undefeated at the top ranking seed.
The players under Giorgos Bartzokas, who tried different rosters in view of the game against Barcelona, started the game in a numb fashion and thus the first quarter ended 18-21.
Problems in defense continued into the second quarter. And this is how the hosts found the opportunity for action with the half time ending at 38-45.
However, in the third quarter, the Greek and European Champions imposed their law. Spanoulis and Gecevicius assisted Giorgos Printezis and the Piraeus team was leading at the end of the third quarter 52-67.
The “reds” tried to preserve their strength in the last quarter, Bartzokas tried different things in view of the game against the “blaugrana” and the game came to a 94-67 end.
The quarters: 18-21, 38-45, 52-67, 76-94
Panelefsiniakos (Skarafigkas): Nikou 3 (1), Papanikolopoulos 17 (3), Papanikolaou, Dimakos, Magkounis 10 (1), Liakopoulos 17 (6 as,5reb), Deligiannis 3, Camp 4, Tsiakos 18 (7reb, 1 3p), Mantzioris, Avramidis 4.
Olympiacos (Bartzokas): Hines, Law 6, Antic 10 (2), Spanoulis 8, Perperoglou 10 (6reb), Shermadini 5, Sloukas 8 (1), Mavroeidis 6, Gecevicius 13 (3 3p.), Printezis 20 (1 3p, 8 reb, 4as), Papanikolaou 3, Mantzaris 5 (1).
GIORGOS BARTZOKAS
“We only had a day and a half following the game against Besiktas to prepare. What we wanted was to win and have a good game, which we didn’t have, for various reasons. Elefsina played very well and chose a style of play. The temperature in the gym was kind of … polar and we had ridiculous percentages. We have a tough month ahead of us. The atmosphere was very good, with fans from both teams present”, the Olympiacos coach stressed at the beginning. “We had good and bad offensive plays. The game was too freed up, the more we kept hitting the rim, the more this situation went kept on going. We managed to achieve this score despite our shooting percentages. We wanted to rest players like Kyle and give minutes to Giorgi. That’s our job. It’s going to be like that till June. It has been bad for us to only play two games in 15 days. Losing a game for the Greek League is going to be very damaging. It might not be an important game in our heads, but we have to keep winning. It has been tough due to the cold in the gym. We are going to prepare for the Friday game with all due diligence. This is a journalistic point of view. We are at a good level. We have added a new player, Powell has a knee problem. We will be out for three days to rest. It’s not mandatory that Olympiacos wins every game by 30. The guys have been playing non-stop and are really tired. We did not play well, but we still won with a big difference”.
GIORGI SHERMADINI
“Olympiacos is my new team, I’m only here for a week, it was my first game and it has been a little tough and peculiar. We won, it was a good game, but we missed too many free shots. We were almost OK”.