Bartzokas: «If we are serious, we will win»
Aiming to come back to winning European competition games, Olympiacos will be hosting Valencia tomorrow (04/11, 20.00 CET), for the 6th Euroleague round.
“Each Euroleague roster has quality and the same goes for Valencia”, the ‘red & whites’ coach, Giorgos Bartzokas pointed out. “They have very experienced players that have been playing together for years and they added two American guards who control and direct the game and are also very aggressive with the basket. In essence, they have a core of experienced players that know how to play good basketball and they lead any team that underestimates them to trouble. They shoot the ball well, they have threes even with their center, Dubljevic, they are good with the transition, they run fast and in general, they attack early without moving the ball a lot. They are a difficult team, a classic Spanish one and I’m going to be saying every time that every Euroleague game is difficult, it’s almost a cliché by now. We all need to understand that if we have the wrong approach, like we did with Monaco, we are going to pay the price”.
Asked if the preparation of the game was different following the first loss of the season, the one to Monaco, he replied: “There is a process. We have individual meetings, we have group ones, we push the team at practice. We have had the chance to have two strong practices following the game against Lavrio. Complacency is an issue, especially when you win games very easily, like we did against Lavrio. Our focus is to not allow that to happen. We all understand the difficulty the competition entails. I believe and hope we are going to be starting off very focused into playing this game, which is very demanding. I believe that having the fans here to support us and by remaining serious, we are going to win”.