“We need to improve”
Olympiacos plays Friday (28/4, 20:15 CET) against Anadolu Efes for the fourth semi final of the Euroleague play-offs. Sfairopoulos and Mantzaris talked about the game against the Turkish team.
"We definitely need to improve in the offense. When you stop a team that averages 89 points at home at 64 and you still don't win, it's obvious that the offense is what hurts you. And of course the 18 turnovers. These are the reasons we did not play good in the offense. We still have tomorrow, we'll watch another video and prepare mentally and psychologically. We want to fight this game and return to Greece. If you don't have anxiety, then you don't care, anxiety needs to motivate you with energy, make you better, we've said that before many times. We have made it with many and tougher missions. It's in our hand to do the job well" the Greek coach said at first.
He then explained that "this last part of the game is a good part, just like in the beginning, we also did good there. I think we should have opened up the margin in the first quarter. The 'black out' lasted from 12 to 32, a whole twenty minutes. Receiving easy baskets got to us, so we weren't opening up spaces, we did not have good rhythm."
Asked on whether he's troubled by the fact that Efes plays very tough, he answered that "no, I'm not troubled, it's just shows that we need to fight more. That's how we need to be playing".
As to what went wrong in the offense, the 50 year old coach stressed that "first of all, we don't run, we don't score easy points, and this is partly to blame on our defense as well. Last night we only had two fast breaks and a shot, that's a total of a mere seven points. On a tactical standpoint, lay ups at set offense are not allowed and we need to score from the perimeter".
VANGELIS MANTZARIS: “The situation is now tough. From now on the knock outs are here, it's a final, we have no more lee way. We need to improve on our offense. We played slow, stopped Efes from scoring a lot, but we have our offense to blame. Turnovers also played a role into losing. We did not play well when attacking, we were slow and turnovers are a result of all that. We never play to lose. We are against the wall now, we are trailing 2-1, but for many years now, we have proved that we have built character, we all believe in each other and we are going to put our soul into winning".