Advancing to the finals with a sweep
Olympiacos defeated Rethymno 80-67 in the third semi-finals matchup of the play offs and advanced to the final. Great performance from the team captain, Vassilis Spanoulis.
Europe’s champions came in to the game determined not to give the slightest chance to Rethymno to believe in victory. So with an amazing start, Giorgos Bartzokas’s team widened the margin to double digits with Giorgos Printezis being unstoppable.
In the second quarter, Katsivelis, Antic and Spanoulis did a great job, thus ending the first half with Olympiacos up 46-31. In the third quarter of play the captain of the Piraeus team, along with Papanikolaou and Sloukas, kept the margin in double figures (64-53 at the 30’ mark).
During the last quarter, Olympiacos held the lead and the team’s strengths, thus reaching victory (80-67) and advancing to the finals.
The quarters: 12-24, 31-46, 53-64, 67-80.
AGOR (Yaples): Angelopoulos 5 (1), Horne 9 (1), Kallinikidis, Pruitt 6 (2), Tsarouhas, Tsohlas 7 (1), Duvnjak 4, Kommatos, Carter 9 (1), Latovic 15 (3), Pettway 12, Sizopoulos.
Olympiacos (Bartzokas): Hines 4, Antic 9 (2), Spanoulis 15 (2), Sermandini 2, Sloukas 10, Powell 6, Gecevicius 2, Printezis 12, Papanikolaou 15 (3), Katsivelis 5 (1).
GIORGOS BARTZOKAS: “We had an overall good game, like the circumstances demanded in order to defeat Rethymno, a good team with a warm crowd. Concentration was imperative. I think that in a great part of the game we were concentrated on our game plan both offensively and defensively, at some point Rethymno countered with their usual style of play, by taking long shots with 5 players face-to-basket. However, we had the patience and the good reaction there to take the lead to double digits, take the 3-0 lead in the series and prepare for the finals against Panathinaikos. I wish all the best to Rethymno, not only for the rest of the season, but for the next one also. They did a good job this year and are praise worthy. Day-by-day will learn if Law and Perperoglou will play. I think that Perperoglou will practice tomorrow, while Law has a fever and gastroenteritis and is again at the hospital, we hope that by tomorrow he’ll be back with us. Perperoglou did some light sprints today and from tomorrow he’ll resume full training. Now for the finals, it’s a series of games that give you the trophy, along with everything that this comes with, which is dealing with emotions, change of arena game-by-game, a very difficult series for us, but also for Panathinaikos”.
KOSTAS PAPANIKOLAOU: “Congratulations to the Rethymno team not only for their performance in the series, but also for the overall presence during the whole season. I wish them good luck for the next series up ahead of them. On the game part now, I believe that we had bigger concentration in comparison the two other games of the series and I think that what contributed to the situation was the preparation we had before the game as we knew that we came into a small arena, were the fans go along with the pace and eventually has the same mentality as the team. I think we did a good job, there were definitely some blank spots, but I think that we played well both defensively and offensively and now what we have to do is focus on what’s next since we have the finals of the championship ahead of us. Once again congratulations to Rethymno”.
THANASSIS YAPLES: “Congratulations to Olympiacos for their performance today, but also for the whole season. I wish Olympiacos all the best for the future and especially to coach. For us it was another challenge as we faced Europe’s Champion. We wanted to have a better showing before our fans during these three games. We didn’t start well, I can even say that we had the worst possible start. We needed to bring some intensity from the bench to awaken some players. We did that and along with the help of the fans, we tried to grab the game with the usual way as coach said, with some split outs and some pop outs, which are the hallmarks of our game style, but Olympiacos has this amazing quality, where after 2-3 plays they find a solution. There weren’t many miss-matches, to take advantage against Olympiacos, I could say just a few. The margin between both teams’ qualities is too great, the elements of the game that we wanted, fighting until the very end and making every play better than the last one, I believe had some results. We made it clear from the beginning that our goal was the series for the third place was our goal and if we could, take third place, which would be a huge step for Rethymno. However, it’s sure that, and we’re saying now that there are good times, the goal for next year also is control and success and power when some bad times come. Rethymno has been accustomed with success over the last two seasons. This is the secret and it’s good to say it now that everything’s fine. Dealing with bad times or bad results or failures, will be the next thing this team hopes to achieve. Once again, congratulations to Olympiacos”.
DAMIR LATOVIC: “We have had an amazing season and we managed to reach the semi-finals, where we lost fair to Europe’s Champion. Now we will fight for third place in the next round. I think we did what we could against Olympiacos, but we didn’t manage to get even one win.
Now we will fight with everything we’ve got in the next round against Panionios and we will manage to finish third”.