By Eurohoops team / info@eurohoops.net
Olympiacos Piraeus routed Baskonia 75 – 50 at home to begin the EuroLeague season in an ideal fashion in front of the team’s fans who returned to the Peace and Friendship arena after a one-year absence. It was the first win for the Reds over the Basque side after two losses in last season’s games.
Sasha Vezenkov was the top scorer of Olympiacos‘ efforts with 16 points. He had 12 of them in the first quarter where his team established its dominance by outplaying the visiting squad 28 – 13.
“It’s a little bit weird because we played a full year without fans, but I am really happy that they are together with us,” Vezenkov said in his post-game interview for EuroLeague TV when asked about the Olympiacos fans who were chanting his name after the end of the match. He, along with Moustapha Fall (13 points) and Kostas Sloukas (11 points, five assists) led an overall balanced offense for the hosts against which an injury-plagued Baskonia didn’t have an answer.
Baskonia traveled to Piraeus without Wade Baldwin and Alec Peters, two of its most important players, while Rokas Giedraitis was also coming off an injury. The latter scored a team-high 15 points and grabbed six rebounds but the absence of the first two was quite noticeable since Dusko Ivanovic’s team was unable to respond to Olympiacos‘ game and paid for the numerous mistakes (21 turnovers) and inefficiency on offense.
Olympiacos took a 47 – 18 lead near the end of the second half after Sloukas‘ 300th career 3-pointer in EuroLeague while capitalizing on Baskonia’s turnovers (18 points off of them) and offensive rebounds (13 second-chance points).
Baskonia balanced the game a bit in the third period but couldn’t make any major comeback attempt. Matt Costello added 11 points plus nine rebounds for Baskonia in his EuroLeague debut.
A complete performance
Olympiacos coach Giorgos Bartzokas applauded the effort of his team and emphasized the defensive work that increased the opportunities on offense.
“I would like to congratulate the team, the players, and the fans for the first win,” Bartzokas said. “The first game of the season on the home court it always difficult and you have a lot of pressure. We were playing a team that beat us twice last season. We were very consistent defensively. We executed our game plan as we wanted. Our guards had 13 defensive rebounds, which was a key point of emphasis for us. Even though we didn’t shoot the ball well on threes – under 30 percent – we did win the game easily because we got a lot of steals and had a lot of assists and we did all the important things in basketball.”