«We should try to react»
Olympiacos flew to Valencia today (08/01), where on Friday (10/01, 21.00 CET), will be playing against the local team, for the 18th day of the Euroleague.
Will Cherry and Willie Reed were not included in the delegation. On the contrary, Vassilis Charalampopoulos did make the final cut, as well as Nikola Milutinov, although not completely over his injury.
“It certainly isn’t a good time for us, but that’s how things are. We are not in the best place for various reasons”, Olympiacos coach, Kestutis Kemzura commented. “Valencia has been playing very well these past few weeks and has won at home against good teams. They’ve been playing much better than when we played in the first round. Dubljevic is their leader, while Colom is the one to facilitate his team mates. They are an up tempo team, that makes a lot of screens on the ball, they move the ball well, they have good shooters and height. We have been working and trying to prepare this game with the players we have available. We know what we need to contain and how we need to attack. So, we are going to be ready to battle”.
And he went on to say: “There are two players that were ‘ejected’ and are not coming with us. We’ll see what the administration decides. It’s a difficult, bad moment, because we also have some injured players, Paul, Milutinov… Milutinov will travel and we’ll see how he feels. We have a small rotation, that’s why Charalampopoulos is back. Like I said, this whole situation is negative, however, I’m certainly expecting from my players to react. I expect reaction and greater focus from the players we have available. Everyone should step up and do something more”
On his part, Sasha Vezenkov stressed: “We play against a team that is in very good shape lately. They have won some big games and whoever watches Liga Endesa must have noticed that they had the lead for 39 minutes in their last game against Real Madrid. We play in a tough court against a good quality team, with experienced players. We need to pay attention to the tempo, the battles. We need to be very tough and do almost everything right, so that we win this game. It is certain that rebounds are going to be very important. Also, the tempo of the game, the defense we are going to be playing against key players, like Dubljevic and their point guards. We are going to have a difficult mission, in a very difficult court and we need to remain 100% focused both mentally and tactics wise. Valencia is also good in the transition as well as on 5 on 5. They are a classical Spanish team that likes to run. From that point on, it’s in our hands how we manage the pressure they are going to try and put on us, as well as anything that might go wrong in the game. We need to cope and succeed in winning this game, because it’s really important to us”.