A defeat in Moscow
Olympiacos lost 98-66 to Khimki for the 13th day of the Euroleague TOP-16 and now holds a 6-7 record one game before the end of the competition.
The Greek Champions played a bad game in Moscow, lost by 32 point and are now at 6-7 with only one game left to play before the end of the TOP-16.
THE DEFENSE: Not matter what Giannis Sfairopoulos tried, it came to no avail. The Russians were shooting … annoyingly well while even when they were off target, the Piraeus team was failing at defensive rebounding and were allowing second and third scoring opportunities for Khimki.
THE OFFENSE: While the offense was working well for the first 15 minutes and Olympiacos had already scored 31 points, it seemed that a switch turned off from that point on. Nervousness, poor shooting and many mistakes cost Olympiacos that actually got to score a total of 66 points.
THE MVP: No one can claim the title on such a night.
KEEPS, FORGETS: Nothing can be kept following such a poor performance.
The quarters: 25-22, 48-36, 76-50, 98-66.
Κhimki (Ιvanovic): Rice 4, Shved 19 (5), Dragic 8 (1), Augustin 18, Boone 9, Koponen 21 (5), 2, Ilnitskiy 2, Monia 7 (1), Honeycutt 8.
Olympiacos (Sfairopoulos): Odom, Hunter 14, Papapetrou 8 (1), Spanoulis 8 (2), Strawberry, Printezis 8 (1), Agravanis, Mantzaris 8 (2), Warrick 8, Hackett 5 (1), Papanikolaou 7.
GIANNIS SFAIROPOULOS: “I would like to congratulate Khimki. I had said before the game that we were going to play a final, but we did not play as we should have played a final. Unfortunately, we played at a much lesser level than we use to. We had to be tougher with our defense, stall their game and try and impose ours. Khimki is a tempo team, with an excellent offensive game, but unfortunately, we did nothing from what we had planned in order to stop them. We did not play smart, we did not give necessary fouls, the difference went above 12 points in the second half and then it was hard to return to the game. They were very confident and scored baskets that we just couldn’t prevent and the difference was always getting wider. I don’t like finding excuses, but this was the third final we had to play in one week and it was tough for my players to find energy and keep a clear head and the necessary concentration so as to remain totally focused during the game. When you play back to back finals, it’s very tough to remain energetic and strong. We played three finals in a period of six days and we did not have the energy we needed to follow Khimki’s tempo. For me, this was the main reason we did not manage to keep up with them tonight”.
DARIUS JOHNSON-ODOM: “We did not play our kind of defense, we received too many baskets, tempo baskets, they were keeping a crazy up-tempo and managed to get a very wide lead. We need to hold our heads high and keep up”.
DUSKO IVANOVIC: «I think we played very well. O think that our defense was the key to this game. We were excellent defense wise and we were patient with our offense. We had prepared the game exactly that way».
PETERI KOPONEN: «It’s never easy, but we played a very good game tonight on both ends of the floor. We followed our game plan exactly as laid out by our coach. It was a very important game for us, everybody knew that and we did our job perfectly».