Unstoppable
Olympiacos, following a terrific performance, bested Zalgiris Kaunas in its home court 77-63, embraced the second place of the group and now, in the two remaining games, the European Champions will try to exhaust their chances to win first place.
Spanoulis, Papanikolaou, Law and Powell were the best players for the Piraeus team. Olympiacos showed early on, playing amazing defense, that they would control the game. The Giorgos Bartzokas team managed to keep the Lithuanians at 27 points at half time and thus lead by 4 points at 20’.
The home team tried to overturn the situation and led 50-48 in the third quarter. But the Greek and European Champions, had a great reaction in the last quarter managing to turn the game on their side and finally get a 77-63 victory.
The quarters: 18-21, 27-31, 50-48, 63-77
Zalgiris Kaunas (Plaza): Darden 7 (1), Jaaber 6 (2/3), Popovic 7 (1/4), Lavrinovic D. Ντ. 4, Lipkevicius, Jankunas 11, Delas, Kuzminskas, Lafayette 2, Kaukenas 17 (1) Foote 4, Lavrinovic Ks. 5 (1)
Οlympiacos (Barztokas): Hines 3 (6reb., 3t.), Law 7 (2), Antic 5 (1), Spanoulis 16 (3), Perperoglou 6, Sloukas, Mavroeidis, Powell 10, Gecevicius 6 (2), Printezis 5 (1), Papanikolaou 13 (3) , Mantzaris 6 (2).
GIORGOS BARTZOKAS: “The game was obviously very important for us; it has been a big challenge winning in this perfect court with these incredible fans. We had to have an amazingly good defensive game against the best Euroleague offense. This has been the “key”, just like creativity, since we had 10 assists more than Zalgiris. We have two more games ahead of us to finish in the best possible place. It doesn’t matter if we finish first, second or third, but that we keep remain with the competition and mainly, that we believe in ourselves. It’s very tough to play in this court because, apart from the fact that the team is very good, the fans really have an active role in the game. It’s good that we won, but that’s it. We have a game against Aris ahead of us (3/12) and our attention goes to that. We want to improve our game every day, to stay healthy and be in good shape. We have character, a good team, but we still have a lot to do”.
On whether Olympiacos is the favorite to qualify for the Final Four: “I don’t think that we have become the favorites, and I truly believe so. There are 10 equally good teams in the Euroleague and everything will be decided in the crucial moments, when small details are going to be of major importance, i.e. injuries and the general condition of the teams. I had to say so then (i.e. following the difficult win over Cedevita), because the team had to go through a process to be here. As for Martynas (Gecevicius), he’s only a shooting guard; we have Spanoulis to fill in his place, who is our star. There is also Sloukas, who is a National team player and always improving. Martynas is important for us, he’s a member of the team and very useful, he helped us a lot last season, but he needs to improve his defensive play”.
VASSILIS SPANOULIS: “We played a very good game, but it was just another victory. We had prepared very well for this game, we managed to get in some very good shots and played good defense. Zalgiris Kaunas is an equally good team. They beat us in our gym and we had wanted to beat them here, which we did. It wasn’t revenge, there are so many other things, we just wanted to win here”.