Did not pull through
Olympiacos was not able to overcome the obstances. The ‘reds’ lost to Baskonia 76-90 at the SEF in a game of very special circumstances, since the team lined up without five players (Harrison, Vezenkov, Ellis, Charalampopoulos and Jean-Charles).
Heavily relying on their dominion in the post, the Spanish team imposed the tempo and closed the first quarter leading 25-13. They didn’t stop there… Their steady domination of rebounding, combined with good percentages from the perimeter, boosted them into a partial 20-6 that awarded them a +22 margin (21-43). The end of the first half found the ‘reds’ trailing by 16 (31-47), however, at the beginning of the 3rd quarter, the players of Giorgos Bartzokas attacked back and with Giorgos Printezis leading the offense closed in at 9p. (44-53 at 25’). Baskonia found solutions with Henry, Dragic and Peters, but Olympiacos brought energy on the floor, put pressure in the defense and closed in at 7p. (60-67) at 32’. At that point, a call by the refs deflated their enthusiasm. Peters made a foul on Vassilis Spanoulis, however, the captain was charged with an unsportsmanlike foul at the same play. The result was that the ‘reds’ received a 4-0 streak (60-71), while the two back to back threes that followed for the Basques – by Dragic and Giedraitis – (60-77 at 34’) practically erased their chances to turn the tables. Olympiacos continued fighting – mainly towards the score difference – but, Baskonia left the SEF with a +14 thanks to its success from the perimeter.
The quarters: 15-23, 31-47, 58-67, 76-90.
"We need to stay together"
The coach of Olympiacos, Giorgos Bartzokas, stressed: “Congratulations to Baskonia for the victory. The game was as expected. We had to step up in too many areas of the game to win it tonight. We used many defensive and offensive tricks, but to win this game, you need very good percentages with threes and to spend the fouls we had wisely. We got scared because we didn’t have many players in the bench and allowed room to Baskonia in the first half to build up confidence. They have great shooters and during the first twenty minutes they had 60% with twos and 75% with threes. It was a bad approach. We got better in the second half, closed in at 7 points, but while we had the procession and were ready to score, Spanoulis got fouled and at the same time, our player got charged with an unsportsmanlike. From that point on, we weren’t able to try and come back again to win the game. That’s the situation, we are not going to cry about it, we are simply waiting for the five players that were absent to come back so that we can have more quality with our practices. For instance, it is very hard for Martin to play against that tall opponents, when he lacks similar contact during practice. Congratulations to my players also. They had good and bad moments in the game. Now, we need to stay together and focus on the next game. With the Euroleague, everyone and win and everyone can lose anywhere”.
Baskonia’s coach, Dusko Ivanovic, commented: “After 13 years, we finally got to beat Olympiacos and I’m very happy about it. I believe we played very good defense. We had good and easy choices in the offense, however, the moment Olympiacos began playing aggressively, we kind of lost easy movement and passing. Especially in the second half, when Olympiacos played defense with switches, we had a problem passing the ball inside the post. But we are all excited about this victory and I would like to comment Vildosa on his great effort to play, because he was dealing with a severe lower back problem and played after an injection, which he chose to do. Everyone played a good game, but I think that Henry played great defense on Sloukas tonight, while he was also very good in the front court”.