First defeat…
Olympiacos was not good for 29 minutes against Anadolu Efes, lost the game 79-86, this being its first defeat for this pre-season.
The Greek Champions lost the final of the Crete 1st International Basketball Tournament to the Turkish team and got the second place. The next friendly game for the Piraeus team is against Galatasaray.
The game began on the wrong foot and continued the same. The 'reds' were trailing early on and Efes got to lead 2-12 and 7-14 at 7'. Poor shooting, turnovers and missed defensive boards took a toll. When all of these got better, the difference closed at six points (18-24) at the end of the first quarter.
The second quarter started equally bad for Olympiacos with Efes running a 0-7 streak to make the score 18-31. The players of Giannis Sfairopoulos continued with turnovers, weren't focused with their defense and hence the Perasovic' team maintained a lead above ten points for the half time to close at 33-50.
Olympiacos showed some reaction in the second half and in 2:40'' run a partial 12-4 to close in at 45-54, but Efes continued with making threes and the lead for the Turks rose to +22 (52-74) with the third quarter ending at 58-74 with two threes by Green and Lojeski.
The Greek Champions run another partial 13-0 at the beginning of the last quarter and the difference went down to nine (65-74) at 33'. A bucket by Osman stopped that streak, but the partial score was 17-2, six minutes before the end of the game. However, Efes reacted yet once again and gained a +10 lead which actually put an end to the game.
The quarters: 18-24, 33-50, 58-74, 79-86.
GIANNIS SFAIROPOULOS: "It is certainly really important not beginning well. It's a teaching defeat. We were surprised, although we knew what kind of team we were playing against. They score a lot in the transition and following offensive rebounding and we received too many points from these two situations. We tried to react twice, but Efes showed to be ahead of us, more ready. Efes runs a lot, goes for the offensive rebounds, but we were not fresh, lacked energy and we need to show more energy and passion in our game from now on. Tournaments are played for the teams to see things, to gain elements in their game and tonight we saw both positive and negative aspects in our game. This tournament is excellent, congratulations to all who tried to see it through, I do wish this tournament becomes an institution".
MATT LOJESKI: "No defeat is good, but you got to learn from your mistakes on games like that. We played against a high level team, we are still in pre-season and we are still learning about what we need to do. We have time; it's still two weeks to go, so we are going to continue working to be ready".