Olympiacos lost in Moscow
Olympiacos was far removed from their best selves and lost to CSKA in Moscow 61-80 for the 12th round of the Euroleague.
Relying on their good defense, as well as on good ball movement (that allowed for good choices in the offense), the ‘reds’ got a +8 lead (9-17 at 6’). CSKA reacted, ‘struck’ from the perimeter with Shengelia and James and running a partial 11-2 got the lead for the first time (20-19 at 10’). With a bucket by Sasha Vezenkov, Olympiacos regained the lead (20-21 at 11’), however, they completely lost touch with scoring afterwards. Missed lay-ups, failed shots and turnovers, allowed CSKA to send the margin to +11 (38-27) and close the first half at +10 (39-29). With a three by Kostas Papanikolaou, the ‘reds’ dropped the difference to 9p. (41-32) at 23’, however, the Russians paid them back with the same currency. They opened … fire from the perimeter, taking advantage of Olympiacos’ misfiring and increased the distance to 17p. (55-38 at 29’). At about 16’’ before the end of the third quarter, Giorgos Bartzokas was ejected from the game with two technical, his players were never able to regain focus, CSKA completely dominated the floor (72-49 at 36’) and got a comfortable victory.
The quarters: 20-19, 39-29, 56-38, 80-61.
"We have to find ourselves fast"
The Olympiacos’ coach, Giorgos Bartzokas, did not attend the Press Conference (not allowed by the regulations), however, he made the following comment about the game: “Congratulations to CSKA on the win. They deserved it. We followed our plan in the first quarter, but we did not do that in the rest of the game. I don’t like using excuses, but we are at a time when the team is practically being rebuilt following the health issues we had to cope with. We were missing a total of five players, we weren’t able to properly practice and at this moment its’s somewhat logical to present this kind of outlook. This doesn’t only have to do with the players that were absent and lack strength, but also with the healthy ones, since we had not been practicing for quite some time. That had an impact. We have to find ourselves fast enough through hard work. There’s no point in feeling down right now, nor in criticizing the situation from a high stand point. The only thing we need to be doing is working, nothing else”.
Christos Pappas talked at the Press Conference: “Congratulations to CSKA. They played better than we did and deserved 100% to win”, the immediate associate of Giorgos Bartzokas stressed and continued: “We have had many problems. Four players just got back having recovered from Covid-19, one player is out due to injury, so we are practically trying to rebuild the team at the moment. We have been dealing with many problems, both of physical conditioning, as of tactical aspects. One more factor has been the very few games we have played recently. We’ve been trying to cover for lost ground in every game we play and get back into rhythm”.
Hassan Martin said about the game: “We got into foul trouble in the second half and maybe that’s why we were less aggressive. We missed some ‘key’ rebounds, Maybe we could have been a little more aggressive as a team in the second half, but we collapsed and paid for it”.