Just wonderful...
Olympiacos was simply great and playing excellent basketball at times reached an easy victory against Unicaja 93-66. Dusan Ivkovic’ “red-whites” showed their intentions from the beginning of the game and never lost control.
The hosts led 12-2 at the beginning and 27-11 at the end of the first quarter with Kostas Papanikolaou leading the show. The excellent team defense continued into the second quarter, at the same time one fast break followed another. With the big guys being the heavy artillery, the margin got wider than 20 points and when the Spaniards reacted at the beginning of the third quarter and came as close as to 9 points, Vassilis Spanoulis and Giannis Bourousis stopped their counter attack in not more than two minutes.
The 200 Euroleague games of Teo Papaloukas was one of the highlights of the game. The Olympiacos captain entered the court at 7’30’’ and at that moment a unique record was sealed. Papaloukas ranks second in games played for the competition, with J R Holden leading with 220.
Τhe quarters: 27-11, 47-25, 68-45, 93-66
Olympiacos (Ivkovic): Papaloukas 2, Νesterovic 11, Spanoulis 16 (2), Bourousis 17, Μavrokefalides 9, Glyniadakis 2, Νielsen 4, Papanikolaou 17 (2), Τeodosic 11 (3), Lucas 4
Unicaja (Reneses): Rodriguez, Freire 6, Prindezis 13, Barrera, Jimenez 9 (2), Tripkovic 7 (1), Rubio 2, Freeland 14, ΜcIntyre 14 (3), Archibald 1
DUSAN IVKOVIC: We are still in the beginning. It’s only the 3rd day of the Euroleague and it’s important for a team like Olympiacos to have reacted this way. Within seven days. In Bamberg, we played the worse game possible and in just a few days we got really better. We played excellent basketball against Unicaja. The Spanish teams run a lot, but we ran even more tonight. We have had many injury problems, but the team did well. All three of our power forwards have been off practices.
We had a dead period again. In the beginning of the third quarter and for about 3.5 minutes we had been very negative, but at the end we won the partial score of the third quarter. I hadn’t expected such an easy victory. I hadn’t expected for Unicaja to show such a bad face. We need to work to reduce turnovers. We have talent in creating and we shouldn’t be making so many mistakes.
Papanikolaou made a good game. He did everything wrong at practice before the game, but he realized what he had to do. Young guys should raise the tempo and then they are allowed to make mistakes. Not if they are walking. Papanikolaou made his first good game. We were right to trust this player.
GIANNIS BOUROUSIS: We made a bad game against Bamberg and we got disappointed. It had been a bad game for all my team mates. We came back with an easy win over AEK. We had to beat Unicaja, since we are after the top ranking spot in our group. We did it. We hadn’t expected that victory would be so easy. We don’t have to prove anything. We have been working hard and the results will be coming.
RADOSLAV NESTEROVIC: It hadn’t been easy at all, but it was a great opportunity for us to play good basketball after the loss against Bamberg, that nobody had seen coming. We began the game really focused and played offensive defense. This was the big difference in contrast to the game in Germany. I think that this is what we have to keep from the game against Unicaja. The fact that we remained focused for almost 40 minutes. Nothing is perfect. It has been a defeat that may have taught us a lot.
ΑITO RENESES: «We missed easy shots and Olympiacos took the lead from the beginning. It was difficult for us to come back since Olympiacos has an excellent roster. We did not play with all required seriousness and lacked the necessary speed for such a game.
It’s difficult to compare this season’s Olympiacos to that of last season. Olympiacos has a great margin for improvement and is certainly going to be very competitive. I know Dusan Ivkovic well and I’m certain that the team is only going to be getting better. The fast breaks killed us. Olympiacos ran very well, especially in the first half. Olympiacos was very good in defense and in rebounding as well as in many other areas”.