Bartzokas: «Serious and focused for the victory»
Giorgos Bartzokas explained the reasons Olympiacos has to continue playing with absolute concentration and seriousness, stressed that Siena needs special attention while he also spoke about the importance of the fans support.
“It’s two games before the end of the Regular season, we have succeeded in qualifying and what we want to finish our games with victories as well as testing a few things tactic wise. Unfortunately, we’ll be playing a Euroleague game without our fans this upsets us. We had very recently said that we would never want this to happen again, but unfortunately it did. If nothing out of the ordinary happens, Simmons will be with us tomorrow and we’ll be getting a few minutes. We wish to win and remain competitive and serious to the end for the credibility of the Euroleague but also for our team’s. We also believe that the more serious we are at every game, we only can benefit from it. Siena has come to a point that despite original predictions, should they beat Unicaja, can qualify at third seed. They are also doing well in Italy, which means they are anything but negligible, they are a quality team that plays better every day. I really respect their coach, he’s very experienced.
If your read statistics right, you can become better… We have some problems with defensive rebounding, but we also the team with the best defense that forces the opponent to have as few possessions possible per game. We are also very good at the transition. We have players that don’t hold the ball in their hands for long and there are distinctive roles, each one knows what they are supposed to do at every time. We are the top team in blocking; Dunston is Euroleague’s top blocker.
Injuries are a major issue, a player that is left out for a week needs a month to return to peak condition. We are doing our best to this end. We have acquired players to support practice as well. I think that all of Unicaja, Bayern and Siena are very good teams, as for the TOP-16 I would prefer the easiest trip of the three…
We have extensively spoken about the fan factor during the season, the four games we played without any fans for the Greek league were unbearable, same goes for tomorrow. We would like to set an example by what we’ve witnessed in Munich, a fantastic atmosphere, extremely pressuring for the opponent, very loud, but also extremely civilized. It has to do with the German society, economy there, I don’t really know with what, education, culture, I don’t know what it is exactly, but I don’t think it’s only a matter of Olympiacos, it has to do with Greece and maybe the Mediterranean in general. I would like to ask once again for the fans to come to the gym and enjoy the game and we are going to do the best we can to win”.
STRATOS PERPEROGLOU: “It’s not good for us to play in an empty gym. The fans give us motivation and energy. From that point on we need to do our job and get the victory. Sometimes it’s tough to find motivation for games like that. But we also have our mind on the games that are coming after Christmas, with the TOP-16, when we are going to be absolutely ready and prepare accordingly. We have a Marathon ahead of us, we need to be serious at every game because this is part of preparing. Today all is fine, I’m fine and God willing I’m playing tomorrow”.