«We should have executed better»

The Olympiacos coach, Giorgos Bartzokas, said that bad percentages were the cause for the loss in Madrid.

“Congratulations to Real for the victory. We, after the game against Valencia, were called to play one more game against a team that would be facing it as if it were a final. We had to find motivation. I have no complaints from our effort, however, we should have executed better. We missed many shots that were under the bucket, sometimes intimidated by the presence of Tavares and others without him being there. We should have had better percentages under the basket. We also created some opens spots and missed most of our shots. You have to be shooting with much better percentages to be able to win here. Nevertheless, I don’t have complaints from the effort. We have one more game against Khimki at the SEF on Friday and we want to close the season the best we can. Good luck to Real”.

«It’s our fault»

On his part, Sasha Vezenkov pointed out: “Tonight we did not show good elements when attacking, especially in the first part, while when we got to close in at 9p. at the end, we did not succeed in challenging the game. Real got a professional win”.  

Asked how he feels that the season is ending prematurely for Olympiacos, he replied: “I feel bitter. We made some bad losses at a very bad time in the season. Euroleague is very strong, but we would have had hopes having not gone through such a bad stretch in January. Being disqualified that early on and not having any other title to fight for is not the best. However, we are to blame and we take responsibility. We have one game left to complete the season, we definitely want to win it and see what happens after that. The most important thing is to win titles, compete for qualifications. This season is definitely a lesson for us. It has been a weird season, but we have had opportunities we did not take advantage of. Next year it’s going to be different. We are going to pinpoint what went wrong and we’ll fix it”.