Nothing breaks him!
Without Spanoulis, Printezis and Young and with Lojeski playing for a very short time due to leg pain, 'Thrylos' made a power exhibition against Cedevita winning 83-70.
'Thrylos' was impressive in Zagreb and succeeded in winning against a team that was coming from six consecutive victories and is now alone leading the group with a 5-1 record.
The Greek Champions did not start the game well defense wise and hence the Croatians took the lead. However, Hunter and Papapetrou stepped up in offense and that allowed our team to make a three point game (24-21) at the end of the first quarter.
The players of Giannis Sfairopoulos significantly improved their defense and succeeded in turning the situation in their favor. Olympiacos took the lead at the end of half-time 40-41.
The Greek Champions made a magnificent start in the third quarter and with a partial 4-17 the score was 44-58 with Papapetrou, Athinaiou and Hunter playing a great offensive game. The difference was above ten points for the most part of the third quarter which ended 56-64 with a three by Giannis Athinaiou.
Mantzaris, Hunter and Papapetrou continued with a great job in the last quarter as well. Athinaiou, Agravanis, Tsairelis as well as anyone playing did a good job and the difference went to +15 (64-79) at 36' when it was actually the end of the game.
The quarters: 24-21, 40-41, 44-58, 70-83.
Cedevita (Mrsic): Pullen 13 (1), White 12 (1), Babic 10 (2), Zganec 2, Walker 5 (1), Musa 3 (1), Bilan 10, Gordic 9, Zoric, Arapovic 6 (2).
Olympiacos (Sfairopoulos): Hunter 19, Papapetrou 16, Strawberry 8, Tsairelis 4, Milutinov 2, Agravanis 11, Mantzaris 12, Hackett, Lojeski 2, Athinaiou 9
GIANNIS SFAIROPOULOS: "It was a great victory for us because we have had many problems, but we played as a team tonight. This victory belongs to all of our team because we played together on both ends of the floor. We did not start well in our offense and allowed Cedevita some free shots, especially from long range. They scored 24 points in the first quarter which is a very large number for the time. However, we improved our defense from the second quarter on and played the kind of defense we wanted to till the end of the game. I would like to congratulate all our players, we can play much better. I would also like to point out that this Olympiacos team has a future, you saw that we have five players in our roster up to 21 years of age and three of them played the starting five. I don't remember any other Euroleague team with such a roster. Cedevita had won three games in a row in the Euroleague and six in a total, they were going through a good momentum, but I think we played good defense on key players like Pulen and Bilan. We stayed focused and executed our plan well. Lojeski has a problem with his Achilles and I did not want to risk. He felt some pain and we did not want to risk an injury; that's why he did not play the second half".
Asked to comment on Mantzaris' performance, the Greek coach said that "Mantzaris is definitely a key player for us, a player that organizes the game and makes his team mates better, but I don't want to only talk about him. Hunter, Athinaiou, Agravanis, Papapetrou did a great job, they all gave something more tonight, so I think it would not be fair to only talk about one player following such a game tonight".
OTHELLO HUNTER: "It was a good game, the coach asked us to be consistent and focused to cover for the void of players that were injured and I think we did it".
*Matt Lojeski suffers from tendonitis in his right leg.