By Eurohoops team/ info@eurohoops.net
Thanks to a tremendous defensive performance and a barrage of 3-pointers (6-9) in the fourth period, Fenerbahce Beko beat Olympiacos Piraeus 73 – 69 at home in Game 4 of the EuroLeague playoffs to tie the series at 2-2 and force a decisive knockout battle next week in Piraeus.
Dyshawn Pierre (17 points, four rebounds) and Tyler Dorsey (16 points) paced Fenerbahce while dropping important baskets down the stretch. With the score 59 – 60 for Olympiacos, Pierre hit the go-ahead triple and then delivered another one from beyond the arc to make it 67 – 61 with 2:42 to play. Dorsey scored a three of his own and, after one by Shac McKissic, Pierre had the answer again for Fener with a downtown bucket for the 73 – 66.
“We’re happy that we could get this win and stretch it to Game 5,” Pierre said. “Obviously, me making open shots was on my teammates. A lot of the attention was on the big men, especially Johnathan Motley, who got the ball out to open shooters, and luckily we were able to make the shots. It’s going to be an interesting atmosphere in Piraeus.”
McKissic kept Olympiacos‘ hopes from beyond the arc again to make it 73 – 69 with 43 seconds remaining. Both teams had opportunities to either increase the lead or trim it but none of them scored as Fener emerged victorious.
“We laid it all on the line,” Dorsey said. “It’s elimination. We made mistakes, both teams made mistakes. It’s been a tough series; every game’s been coming down to the wire, so I expect nothing less for Game 5. It’s amazing, we battled and we gotta get prepared. We’ve got a couple of days and we’ve got to focus. No matter how it goes, we’ve got to play hard and leave it on the line [in Piraeus].”
On a poor night for most of Olympiacos‘ biggest weapons, McKissic led the Reds’ offense with 20 points and five rebounds in a major effort. Isaiah Canaan added 12 points while Moustapha Fall had 12 points and seven rebounds. In the meantime, Fener’s defense held MVP favorite Sasha Vezenkov to just 2 points on 1-6 shots, some of them being bad options. Kostas Sloukas, the hero of Game 3, finished with three points on just 1-3 from the field.
Nigel Hayes-Davis contributed 12 points for Fener, making two consecutive threes at the beginning of the fourth period, to give his team some extra momentum after Olympiacos took a 44-49 late in the third period. Fener responded with a 10-0 run but Olympiacos retook the advantage before the last minutes and the hosts’ final push.
“Dyshawn Pierre scored three-point shots which were crucial in that moment of the game,” Olympiacos coach Giorgos Bartzokas said. “We needed to be careful to avoid his shots, because we mentioned that this guy would be the decision-maker, the crucial guy. We allowed him to make 3 open shots, and he made them. Congratulations, it was a game as we expected it to be, a tough game, and now we have a game on our home court. This is our chance now.”
With defense as guide
Fenerbahce coach Dimitris Itoudis commended his players for how they performed particularly on the defensive end to force Olympiacos into having a low-quality game.
“I want to say congratulations to our team, everybody: those that played the game and those that were not dressed due to injuries or the fact that we need to dress [just] 12 players,” Itoudis said.” Everybody deserves congratulations. Overall in the series, strategically and defensively, we’ve managed to keep Olympiacos below 20 points in each quarter; I think [that in] only one quarter they scored 26. That’s a huge effort defensively on their key players – they have extremely good and talented players and a great system. The fact that today they were sharing only 11 assists says something, too. We had issues, and obviously this was a close game – they took over, we took over – but we stayed composed. |