Great victory on the road for Olympiacos
Olympiacos bested Darusafaka 77-71 on the road for the 10th day of the Euroleague and has a 6-4 record. The top scorer for the Greek Champions was Giorgos Printezis with 15.
The Piraeus team started the game well. Milutinov and Spanoulis were doing a great job and made the score 9-14 at the beginning. The hosts closed in 21-24 and 28-29 a little later. The coming in of Matt Lojeski gave his team on offensive boost. The American helped the Greek Champs to make the score 28-37 with continuous points and half-time ended 34-43.
In the beginning of the second half the margin was even up to 11 points for the 'reds' (38-49), but the Turkish team came back and made a five points game (61-66). Green and Hackett had their say at that point, Printezis and Spanoulis were scoring steadily and the score was 67-72 with three minutes to go. From that point on, the team of Giannis Sfairopoulos only received points by free throws and reached a comfortable 71-77 victory.
THE POINTS
The quarters: 21-24, 34-43, 51-57, 71-77
Darusafaka (Blatt): Wilbekin 8 (2), Batuk, Erden 4, Wanamaker 11 (3), Clyburn 21 (1), Moerman 2, Αldemir 10, Anderson 7 (1), Bertans 8 (2)
Olympiacos (Sfairopoulos): Green 10 (2), Birch 5, Young, Papapetrou 4, Spanoulis 13 (1 3p., 5as.), Μilutinov 4, Printezis 15, Papanikolaou 3 (1), Mantzaris 5 (1), Hackett 3, Lojeski 15 (3/5 3p, 7reb.)
THE QUOTES
GIANNIS SFAIROPOULOS: "This victory is very important for us because it's against an exquisite team. I think that we controlled the game from beginning to end, we played very well on both ends of the floor, and especially in the second half we played a very good defensive game and built a solid margin by half-time. We told our players that Darusafaka was definitely going to react. We saw that happening, we came in strong, they only scored 8 points at first, but closed in with 3 continuous threes. We succeeded at winning because we kept them with low scoring, at 71 points, when they average 81. And the most important thing is that in the last minutes when each possession mattered, we showed character and I think we won a fair victory. Euroleague is very tough this season, everyone need to understand that, we need to continue fighting every game, and stay focused on our goal because the season is too long".