Fought like a lion but did not come through…
Olympiacos was bested 76-70 by CSKA Moscow and is now waiting to find out who its opponent for the Euroleague play-offs is going to be. It's going to be a Spanish team for sure and the 'reds' will be lacking the home court advantage.
The beginning of the game was not what Giannis Sfairopoulos would have liked. The Russians were leading 21-10 at 7', but 'Thrylos' had complete control of the game during the last three minutes of the first quarter and with a partial 7-0 closed in 21-17.
Thrylos' amazing defense prevented CSKA Moscow from scoring for three minutes into the second quarter, Agravanis and Papapetrou gave energy to our team and hence Olympiacos led 21-22. The two teams were fighting a close battle and the score was 29-28 at 17'. The 'reds' lost their concentration for about two minutes and the Russians took advantage of that running a 7-0 streak, making the score 36-28, but the Olympiacos players immediately reacted and half time was 39-34.
CSKA Moscow managed with a partial 12-5 during the first six minutes of the third quarter to lead 51-39, but Thrylos once again had an amazing reaction. With a partial 10-0 closed in 51-49 at the end of the third quarter.
Olympiacos kept at close range (53-51 at 32'). Each time the home team was trying to build a difference, the players of Giannis Sfairopoulos had the answer, with Lojeski scoring 8 points in a row to make 61-59 at 36'. However, some lost defensive rebounds at the end and the nerve wrecking shooting percentages of the Russians have the home team the victory. Thrylos tried for a huge upset, came as close as 74-70, but did not make it to the end.
The quarters: 21-17, 39-34, 51-49, 76-70.
CSKA Moscow (Itoudis): De Colo 7 (1), Teodosic 14 (2), Frizdon 2, Nichols 2, Jackson 6 (1), Weems 16 (1), Vorontsevic 3 (1), Kaun 16, Khryapa, Hines, Kirilenko 10.
Olympiacos (Sfairopoulos): Hunter 5 (3reb), Dunston 6 (4reb), Papapetrou 5 (1 3p, 4reb), Sloukas 12 (2 3p, 1 reb, 4as), Printezis 16 (1 3p, 5reb), Agravanis, Mantzaris 2 (3reb, 1as), Katsivelis, Lafayette 6 (2 3p, 4reb, 5as), Darden 2, Lojeski 16 (4 3p, 6reb, 2st, 2as).
GIANNIS SFAIROPOULOS: "I would like to congratulate CSKA for the victory. They played better for most part of the game, we knew before we came here that we had a tough mission because whenever you play CSKA in Moscow you have a tough task. Except for the beginning of the game and the beginning of the second half when we did not have concentration and did not play well, we were focused for the rest of the game, played better defense, and depleted CSKA's safety net. CSKA was always leading the game but we never stopped fighting to the end. I think that what decided the game was rebounding, we allowed 19 rebounds to the opponent, we allowed many second chances and were not good at all in that area".
GIORGOS PRINTEZIS: "We fought hard tonight, but rebounding cost us. We have played a very good TOP16, despite the many injuries, we coped with disparities, now we are without home court advantage, but we'll keep going on. We have a game against Nizhny that in theory is of no importance, but we need to play it and at the same time rest during these ten days so we come into the quarter finals and fight these games either away from the Peace and Friendship Stadium or in it, either it's three games, or four, or five".