By Eurohoops team/ info@eurohoops.net
A couple of months after a heartbreaking loss to Olympiacos Piraeus in Game 5 of the EuroLeague playoffs, AS Monaco returned to Peace and Friendship arena with a vengeance.
Elie Okobo scored 22 points and Mike James finished with 20 points, six rebounds, and five assists to lead AS Monaco to 81–76 away win over previously undefeated in all competitions Olympiacos.
“You depend on your key players [like James and Okobo], all the teams do”, Monaco head coach Sas Obradovic said: “But, if you have not just a scoring night, but what we did defensively, that helped us later offensively. It is a great win. We had four road games out of five so far. It was not easy, but we got important wins and I hope we go on like this”.
The Reds suffered their first defeat after four straight EuroLeague wins, including roadkills over powerhouses Real Madrid and Barcelona. Shaq McKissic scored 15 points, Sasha Vezenkov had 13 points plus seven rebounds and Kostas Sloukas finished with 10 points plus eight assists.
Olympiacos led by eight (41-33) after the break, but the tables were turned almost in a flash. Jordan Loyd, who had a silent first half, drained one bucket after the other for eight points and James scored in transition to put Monaco up 41 – 43.
As James said: “We have a little bit more creators on this team than I am used to, so I can spend a little more energy in other areas. It feels good to be able to do that and be able to help the team. Elie Okobo played well tonight, Jordan also got going in the third quarter; that was big for us as well.”
Save for a brief reaction by Olympiacos, Monaco went on to control most aspects of the game on both ends, shutting down the hosts close the third quarter with a 10 – 23 partial score to take a 51 – 56 lead.
Okobo, Alpha Diallo and James connected at the beginning of the fourth period to give Monaco its first double-digit advantage in the game, 54 – 64 and then the latter increased the margin to 12. Olympiacos fought back to trim the deficit to 66 – 72 but that was the closest Giorgos Bartzokas came to their opponents.
Shaquielle McKissic scored 15 points for the losing side. “It was not our night today we need to go on, we need to learn from what happened”, said coach Bartzokas.
“I said other times when we were winning that this is the EuroLeague, every game is a different story. You need to control emotions, which we did not do today because of the fans, we wanted to do more today, so instead of playing simple, giving the extra pass, a lot of players played with their emotions. But this is EuroLeague, if you lose, you forget the game and go to the next one.”