Bartzokas: «We must learn from this defeat

Giorgos Bartzokas said the defeat to Panathinaikos to be the result of his team’s terrible shooting percentages in addition to their impatience.  

“Congratulations to Panathinaikos, they played very decisive and got a fair win. They gained confidence thanks to our poor performance on both ends of the floor. They scored 8 points in critical moments of the game, right before the clock expired for their plays. That gave them confidence. We had despicable percentages. We had 4/16 free throws, 25% with threes, 40% with twos. We obviously have huge culpability in terms of how we managed the game and how we lost it. But, it’s still one of the many games we are going to be playing with Panathinaikos. I think we are going to learn from it and we are going to be calmer and more patient. We shall not try to finish the game in the first half, because games like these have lots of difficulty. Panathinaikos found momentum in the crucial parts of the game and won”.  

On his part, the coach of Panathinaikos, Ergin Ataman, pointed out: “We had a different approach to the game compared to the previous two ones against Olympiacos. We changed a lot of things offense wise; we hadn’t had Mitoglou with us in the previous games anyway. He’s important to us because he plays two positions, both 4 & 5 and can find many open shots. We closed the space in defence and got the rebounds. We did not play a good offensive game, we made a lot of turnover, but it was a very weird night for Olympiacos as well, they shot 4/16 free throws. They had a bad night and we used it to our advantage. We showed we are a good team, but we need to get better”.