Did not last to the end

Olympiacos lost 67-64 to Fenerbahce, but keeps home court advantage at hand since they managed not forfeit the +9 margin of the first game. Erick Green was the top scorer for the Greek Champions with 17 points.

The game had a crazy tempo in the first quarter. Printezis and Green were unstoppable at scoring to lead to the 22-22 tie of the first ten minutes. Nevertheless, the rhythm slowed down in the second quarter, many fouls and poor shooting led to low scoring and a slow tempo had half time ending 40-34 for the hosts.

However, in the third quarter, the Greek Champs were unstoppable. Papanikolaou, Green and Waters had all the answers, Milutinov was dominant against Vesely and Uddo at both posts and the game was 47-56 for Olympiacos after the 'reds' run a partial 7-22 during that time.

During the last ten minutes, Olympiacos sent the difference to +10 for the first time in the game (50-60), but a partial 14-0 by Fener at that point made the score 64-60 and the game ended 67-64.

THE POINTS
The quarters: 22-22, 40-34, 47-56, 67-64.
Fenerbahce (Obradovic): Uddo 6 (6reb), Antic, Bogdanovic 27 (3), Bennett, Sloukas, Nunnally, Vesely 5, Kalinic 4, Dixon 8 (2), Datome 17 (3).
Olympiacos (Sfairopoulos): Green 17 (1), Birch 5, Papapetrou 2, Waters 4, Agravanis 1, Milutinov 2, Printezis 10 (1 3p, 7reb), Papanikolaou 13 (3 3p, 8reb, 2st), Mantzaris 6 (2), Lojeski 4.

THE QUOTES
GIANNIS SFAIROPOULOS: "I think it was a real derby. A game between two excellent Euroleauge teams, a high level game. An now that it's over, there is a bitter taste in our mouths, because we could have done better, we could have won. We allowed many offensive rebounds in the first half and that gave Fener a lot of easy points and many open shots. The way the first quarter was going, the score was not good for us. Fener put pressure in the second quarter, forced us to shooting bad. We were trailing by 6, but were still in the game. We played very well in the third quarter, played the defense we had wanted to play, and controlled the game for a large part of the second half. Later on, however, due to Fener's great pressure, we made a lot of mistakes, lost our concentration, we made six turnovers in the last eight minutes and due to our poor offensive game, Fener found easy scoring. We tried to return to the game at the end, the plan was to foul on Uddo, because everyone else was very good with free throw shooting, and then Sloukas entered the game equation as well. We tried to trap the guards to not allow them pass the ball to Uddo, but we did not succeed and unfortunately we lost the game. We need to move on. It's always hard to play here, Fener is last season's finalist, so we need to move on, game after game, step by step and see what we will have accomplished at the end". 

ZELJKO OBRADOVIC:  "The fact that our gym was packed, that we had a sold out, was immense for us. I told my players so. Our fans trust us and this is the most important thing. That's what I told them and asked them to give 100%. The tempo was very fast in the first quarter and the score was very high. We played very good defense in the second quarter and hence we built the difference. In the third quarter, and it's not the first time this is happening, we did not play the right way. We did not show concentration, they scored a lot and easily and we seemed as if we did not want to play defense. Hence they found easy scoring, they built their psychology and were scoring in the last three seconds of their offensive plays. In the last quarter we played with a totally different way, with a different mentality, totally new energy and turned the game in our favor".

VANGELIS MANTZARIS: "Unfortunately, we lost our calm. They put a lot of pressure on us, the fans entered the equation, we weren't focused and did not make it. We all know how important Vasilis is for our team. We came here to win and not to hold on to the first game margin. We cannot be talking about what would have happened should Spanoulis had played. Ifs don't win you games. If we had managed to hand in a little longer when we were winning by 10, we would have also won the game. We played against the Euroleague finalist, against a fanatic audience, without our captain and leader, and we still came here to fight and win. Now, it's up to us to secure home court advantage and this is what's important. We missed an opportunity, but we continue".