By Nikos Varlas
He is the guy that’s stealing the show in the Euroleague play offs series between Maccabi Tel Aviv and Panathinaikos. He is also a player who is not considering himself a star – at least not yet – and he is putting the team ahead of him. But let’s be honest. Yogev Ohayon is the talk of the European basketball and he took the time to answer Eurohoops.net questions.
When he is asked about his personal effort against the Greens in last night’s win (65-62) that gave a 2-1 edge in Maccabi, he prefers to play the team card: “It’s very nice, but it was a team effort, we played very well as a unit. And I hope that we will do it again in Game 4”.
After all he is kind of new in this stage of European basketball, something that he accepts: “It’s an honor to be in the same team with players like Papaloukas and I am very lucky to learn from them and be around them. I think that all this help me very much in the game against PAO”.
But it’s still the truth that the 25 years old player is the guy who is not afraid stars like Dimitris Diamantidis and Saras Jasikevicius: “It was very exciting to play against them and it’s an honor to beat them as a team, with Maccabi. They got a lot of experience and achievements in their life and I hope those kind of games will help me in the future”.
The question now is if he can repeat his performance in Game 4. He knows that Panathinaikos will react: “I believe that they will try to make some adjustments, but we will also try to learn from the things that happened in Game 3. We will watch the video with the coaches, we will see what we must do better and I think that the coaches we will prepare us for the game”.
His promise is simple: “The team will be ready to play in the same way that we started Game 3, we will dive for every loose ball and we will try to do our best”.