Bartzokas: «We should have made better decisions»
Giorgos Bartzokas spoke at the press conference following Olympiacos' game against Zalgiris in Kaunas for the 29th round of the EuroLeague.
In his opening statement, the Olympiacos head coach said: “First of all, congratulations to Zalgiris. It was a truly intense game for 48 minutes. Unfortunately for us, we had two opportunities to win, with the last shot in the regulation and in the first overtime, but we needed to make much better decisions than the ones we made. On the other hand, our fourth quarter wasn’t good enough to secure the win. Even though we had an 11-point lead, controlled the game, and had the opportunity to finish it simply by sticking to our principles, we allowed them to come back with some mistakes we made and poor offensive decisions, and eventually to win. Congratulations to them. We’re looking forward to the next game.”
When asked what ultimately decided the game in the second overtime, Bartzokas replied: “In the end, we lost Tyrique Jones due to fouls, and many of our players were in foul trouble; Walkup had four fouls as well, so we had to find a way to ensure better defensive lineups at the end. Of course, Zalgiris has excellent offensive players, but we couldn’t play the physical defense we usually do. Zalgiris attempted many free throws. I’m not saying the referees made mistakes. We tried to play physically, but we didn’t have the ability to do so.”
Regarding managing the game without Vezenkov and Milutinov, Bartzokas commented: “We are talking about our leading scorer and our leading rebounder. It’s obvious we missed them. We had to play as a team; we did play as a team, and we had the chance to win here, which is not easy at all. But in the end, we leave Kaunas disappointed.”
As for the condition of the two injured players, he added: “If we had the chance to play two days later, Vezenkov would have played. He will play in the next game. Milutinov broke his finger and needs some time. I’m not sure about the next game, since we play in about 10 days, but I hope we’ll have him available as well.”