Bartzokas: «The result is upsetting, but we move on»
Upset by the defeat, but determined to look ahead was the Olympiacos’ coach, Giorgos Bartzokas, following the game against Panathinaikos.
“Congratulations to Panathinaikos for the win. For us, the developments of the last quarter were not unexpected. I don’t want to say that, but too many things happened so as to lose a game we seemed to be controlling. I think that we began the quarter with 10 points in our favor, while just a little while before, they were 14. We had too many opportunities to finish this game, because we adjusted to their zone defense in the second half, we found many open shots, but unfortunately we had 0/9 threes in the fourth quarter, despite most of them being totally open shots. We also missed four free throws in a crucial part of the game and Panathinaikos became confident, made some really very difficult shots on defense and controlled the momentum. Unfortunately, all this commentary that we were the super favorite and the fact that we did not finish the game when the built the difference but allowed Panathinaikos to put pressure on us closing in the score, led us to completely wrong choices in the end. However, even our good ones, were off target. But we move on. It’s still a November game. We are really frustrated by the loss, but we are going to have the chance during the season to correct this result”.
On his part, the ‘greens’ coach, Dimitris Priftis, pointed out: “The game was ambivalent. At some point, Olympiacos built a difference to our many continuous turnovers. It’s important that we did not lose our head and proved to be mentally strong. We made some big shots. I want to congratulate our players for their general effort. We played on a big team’s DNA, which is something we don’t usually do. I hope this win is going to give us a boost to do that more often. We thank the fans that came to OAKA to see us off, despite having upset them with our Euroleague results. This game is very important, because although it stills only gives you two points ranking wise, it’s very important for the fans and the fans is a part of the team”.