Bombarding and 13-0

Olympiacos passed through Patra edging Apollo 88-69 and thus finishing the first round of the Greek League with a 13-0 record.

The European and Greek Champions entered the game decided to put an early end to it. Printezis, Spanoulis and Mantzaris led the rest of the company to a 22-14 lead at the end of the first quarter.

However, the Piraeus team did not maintain the same concentration in defense in the second quarter and Apollo managed to close in with the half time closing at 41-37 in favor of the team of Giorgos Bartzokas.

Giorgos Printezis and Vassilis Spanoulis took initiative in the third quarter and together with Kostas Papanikolaou, Olympiacos stepped on the accelerator and disappeared in the horizon. With a partial 10-2 in the first three minutes of the second half, the Piraeus team took the score to 51-39 and never looked back.

Giorgos Bartzokas tested different rotations and faces in view of the game against Maccabi Tel Aviv in the last quarter with the European and Greek Champions reaching a 88-69 victory.


The quarters: 14-22, 37-41, 51-62, 69-88
Apollo Patras (Vetoulas): McCollum 19 (1), Argyropoulos 9 (1), Grand 16 (2), Lianos, Erceg, Petrovic 13 (3), Turner 8, Krolo 4. Ο lympiacos (Bartzokas): Hines 8, Law 7, Antic 8 (2), Spanoulis 7 (1), Perperoglou 10 (2), Sloukas, Mavroeidis 4, Gecevicius 8 (2), Printezis 18 (3), Mantzaris 9 (3), Papanikolaou 9 (1).

GIORGOS BARTZOKAS: “Tonight’s game and the atmosphere reminded me of old times for Greek basketball and everyone at the gym enjoyed themselves. Apollo is making a great effort and they deserve to be congratulated. It’s very pleasant to have fans of both teams in the tribunes. The most difficult thing in Greece is exactly that. Fascism resides in the gyms and in the universities and you don’t have the right to have a different opinion when there. I hadn’t expected for Apollo to play this zone for 35, 37 minutes, but it was a good opportunity for us. The coach chose to let us take open shots and you saw the kind of percentages we achieved. Our assists show we played as a team and the difference in the rebounds the effort we made. We concluded the first round undefeated, which is very important for us. We have continuous trips, we go to Tel Aviv after that and then we go to play PAOK, but it’s important that the guys have been working hard. There is nothing wrong with our roster. I’m very content with the effort of the players. We did not have Powell with us tonight, who is injured, and Shermadini, who had to take care of his athletic visa, but that’s it. A basketball game lasts 40’, but the one against Siena lasted 40’03’’, the basket was out of time and the only fair thing is for the game to be repeated”.

VANGELIS MANTZARIS: “Congratulations to Patra for the effort they’ve been putting in and to the fans for filling up the gym. I wish it was the same everywhere. It was a tough game for us and we knew it would be. We began well, run, pressed and gained a lead which we did not manage to keep to the end. We had some bad periods in the second half as well, but we controlled the game.
I don’t know what’s going to happen with the objection, our job is to play and focus on the game against Maccabi and up to the cup final. I think it was very positive to have fans of both teams sitting side by side tonight. People love basketball and the gyms have started once again to fill up”.

CHRISTOS STAVROPOULOS: “We submitted the memorandum to the Euroleague today, as required by the Regulations. We specify that the basket scored by Siena at the end was out of time and we request for the game to be repeated. It’s obvious that the Siena basket cannot count, we all saw what happened. We are expecting the Euroleague ruling and I think that it’s only clear what happened at the game. We are waiting to find out what is going to happen before the game against Maccabi Tel Aviv. I think that we are going to have an answer until Wednesday”.

APOLLO PATRAS

NIKOS VETOULAS: Olympiacos has many more solutions and it was expected that we wouldn’t be able to resist for long into the second half. We tried to protect the post and gave open shots to Olympiacos, but the difference in rebounds was also great. I think we made a more than descent effort and whether we lost by 10 or by 20 it would be the same. Our focus is on the game against Ikaros.

ΙVAN KROLO:Congratulations to Olympiacos but also to Apollo for putting in a huge effort. We tried to play hard, but Olympiacos gained a big lead in the second half and it was hard to cover for it. But I’m sure we did not disappoint our fans with tonight’s performance.