First in his “second home”
Olympiacos beat Maccabi Tel Aviv 90-82 in the final of the second International Tournament that took place in Heraklion and won top seed.
The Piraeus team played without three starters (Spanoulis, Printezis, Papanikolaou) against the Israeli team.
The first quarter began with the two teams shooting extremely well, especially behind the 6.75 arc and the score was high from the start. Tillie and Milutinov played a great offensive game and hence Olympiacos was leading 23-22 at the first quarter.
In the second quarter, the 'reds' continued being good in the offensive part, however, there were a lot of gaps in the defense, lack of focus and Maccabi found a lot of open shots. Spahia's players were usually on target, got to score 27 points during that time and half - time was 44-49 for them.
In the first five minutes of the third quarter the Piraeus team substantially improved their defensive outlook. Agravanis and Milutinov were doing a great job and with a partial 12-4 in 5', Olympiacos got a 56-53 lead at 25'. Olympiacos continued being impressive on both ends of the floor into the third quarter. Hence, the partial score was 24-6 following 9 minutes into the second half and the score was 68-55, before Thomas sunk a three to make the score 68-58 and the third quarter score was finally 68-60.
In the last quarter, the guests returned to the game, closing in 79-74 at 35'. Olympiacos however, had complete control of the game and got a rather easy victory at the end.
The quarters: 23-22, 44-49, 68-60, 90-82.
QUOTES
GIANNIS SFAIROPOULOS: “We need work, we haven't found automation yet, we need to work more on both ends of the game. Especially in the first half, we showed great weakness defense wise, this is not our style, we received 49 points. However, we got better in this end in the second half and kept the lead to the end. We are not interested in the result, we are interested in getting the new players incorporated, the old ones know what we want and what we look for is the integrate the new with the old players. They are quality players, we have quality, we have a lot of room for improvement because we are still away from the desired level. I'd like to thank the organizers, the Municipality, the prefecture, the local authorities in general for this tournament, that is already an institution in its second year and it's great for the fans to be able to watch Euroleague level friendly games ”.
BRIAN ROBERTS: “Friendly games are for a reason, to improve your game as a team. Unfortunately, we were missing three key players against Maccabi, the best team we have played against so far. We are still "building" on our game, however, we want to try and improve fast. We still have two friendly games to play and a lot of work ahead of us ”.
In the last quarter, the guests returned to the game, closing in 79-74 at 35'. Olympiacos however, had complete control of the game and got a rather easy victory at the end.
The quarters: 23-22, 44-49, 68-60, 90-82.
QUOTES
GIANNIS SFAIROPOULOS: “We need work, we haven't found automation yet, we need to work more on both ends of the game. Especially in the first half, we showed great weakness defense wise, this is not our style, we received 49 points. However, we got better in this end in the second half and kept the lead to the end. We are not interested in the result, we are interested in getting the new players incorporated, the old ones know what we want and what we look for is the integrate the new with the old players. They are quality players, we have quality, we have a lot of room for improvement because we are still away from the desired level. I'd like to thank the organizers, the Municipality, the prefecture, the local authorities in general for this tournament, that is already an institution in its second year and it's great for the fans to be able to watch Euroleague level friendly games ”.
BRIAN ROBERTS: “Friendly games are for a reason, to improve your game as a team. Unfortunately, we were missing three key players against Maccabi, the best team we have played against so far. We are still "building" on our game, however, we want to try and improve fast. We still have two friendly games to play and a lot of work ahead of us ”.