Bartzokas: "Let’s remember what carried us up to here"

Giorgos Bartzokas said to believe that Olympiacos’ bad performance was due to ‘emotional drain’ after the final four.

“We lead the series 1-0. As you all saw, it took 5-10 minutes of intensity in our game so that we could cooperate on both ends of the floor, because we weren’t doing that for thirty minutes before”, the ‘reds’ coach stated and went on to say: “We obviously thought that 1-0 would come without even us trying. I understand that always after a final four there is a mental and psychological drainage and because of it the body is depleted of energy too. You always need about a week to get back to your standards, to your principals and to what has carried us up to here. Today we tried to do things completely removed from our principals, we were ‘walking’ as you all saw for thirty minutes and it took us to really start playing in the last ten minutes to win. That’s my comment. I don’t want to overestimate the fact that we didn’t play well, but neither do I want to underestimate the fact that our mind, our focus, our will to play together just weren’t there today”.

On his part, the coach of Peristeri, Milan Tomic, pointed out: “We played a good game, for the first time I would be calling it a quality one. The guys gave it all. We controlled the game for 28 minutes, but to beat Olympiacos you have to be able to control it for forty minutes. In some small details, some defensive plays, we did not react well. In general though, we tried and I believe that the fans saw a very good playoffs game”.