A heavy loss in Kaunas
Olympiacos did not live up to expectations in Kaunas and lost to Zalgiris 69-94 for the 23rd round of the Euroleague.
Our team's coach, Giorgos Bartzokas, did not have Giorgos Printezis available (who did not travel to Lithuania due to injury), while during the game, 'lost' two more players. Taylor Rochestie was injured and was not able to play in the second part, while captain Vassilis Spanoulis was 'knocked out' of the game at 24'.
It is noteworthy that the 17 year old guard, Alexandros Nikolaidis, made his Euroleague debut in the game!
Taking advantage of the bad perimeter shooting of our team, as well as its many mistakes (a total of 5 in the first quarter, for only 1 of the Lithuanians), Zalgiris got a difference of +7 (18-11) at 7'. With two back to back threes by Papanikolaou and Rubit, Olympiacos closed in to one point (18-17), but the hosts reacted immediately. With pressing defense and good ball movement, they replied with a partial 16-3 score and sent the difference to +14 (32-20 at 14'). The 'reds' continued not finding rhythm in offense, however, the bad percentages of the players of Sarunas Jasikevicius (how, neverthless, were infallible in the 2nd quarter) from the free throw line, allowed them to close in to -9 (46-37) at the end of the first half.
Olympiacos, however, did not improve his image in the second half even at the minimum, neither in defense nor in the offense. On the contrary, Zalgiris continued 'firing' from the 6.75 line skyrocketing the difference to +24 (69-45) at 29'. Sasha Vezenkov, Nikola Milutinov and Wade Baldwin tried to 'shrink' the margin to 15p. (77-62 at 34'), however, Zalgiris got to once again 'strike' from the perimeter, regained complete control and got the victory with characteristic ease.
The quarters: 22-17, 46-37, 69-48, 94-69.
Ζalgiris (Jasikevicius): Walkup 12 (2), Rivers 12 (4), Lekavicius 11 (1), Hayes 2 , Venskus, Jankunas 1, Lukosiunas, Μilaknis 19 (5), Geben 12, Jokubaitis 7, LeDay 7, Ulanovas 11 (2)
Οlympiacos (Bartzokas): Rochestie 6 (1), Baldwin 9, Paul 7 (1), Nikolaidis, Koniaris 2 , Spanoulis 5 (1), Μilutinov 8 (13 reb), Vezenkov 15 (1), Papanikolaou 3, Rubit 10 (1), Ellis 4
Defense and injuries decided the result
The Olympiacos' coach, Giorgos Bartzokas, stated: "I want to congratulate Zalgiris, they played a focused game. For us, it was a tough procedure to win this game, having lost two veteran players during the game, like Spanoulis and Rochestie. Due to their absence, we missed facilitation in our game, we missed guidance, we missed scoring. We played the game with guards that are not experienced for this level. We made a bad beginning in the game defense wise. In the first twenty minutes, Zalgiris had one turnover and this had to do with not feeling pressure on our part. We knew they have two good shooters, who scored 19 and 12 points respectively; I'm talking about Milaknis and Rivers. They scored with almost 64% from the three point line, so the situation had been very difficult for us. But that's how Euroleague is. You need to be focused, be healthy and be ready for such games. We weren't tonight, but we need to gather our pieces for the next game that's in two days and we don't know how many players we are going to have".
Asked about the severity of the injuries for Spanoulis and Rochestie, he replied: "We don't know yet. The doctor said that both Spanoulis and Rochestie are having MRIs. But, in regard to Rochestie, it's certain he will be out for three weeks. Spanoulis has a problem with his ankle, where he has had a surgery a year ago. So, tomorrow we'll get to see what the exact problem is".
When asked to comment on whether the pad perimeter percentages of the 'reds' are due to the good defense Zalgiris was playing or rather to the bad night of his players, he said: "It's always both. Zalgiris did a very good job defense wise, but at the same time, we were being hesitant. Despite moving the ball from one part of the court to the other, we have had easy choices, to penetrate, to facilitate more things… Unfortunately, as I said before, we lost two players during the game. These players are our main facilitators, so, we didn't have a way to do just that. That's the problem. We had more rebounds, we had almost the same number of assists, but for yet another time we were sluggish in defense, when we should be fighting and play hard. But we didn't do that".