By Antonis Stroggylakis / info@eurohoops.net
Thanks to an outstanding 14 – 0 run in the final minutes of the game and some superb shooting (15 – 26 3-pointers), Barcelona defeated Olympiacos Piraeus 77 – 68 on the road to begin the new EuroLeague season with two wins.
In a game of several runs, Olympiacos scored nine unanswered points to go up 66 – 59 with four minutes to play.
Barca’s answer was impressive as the Blaugrana managed to transform that deficit into a 66 – 73 lead entering the final minute of the game.
Alec Peters cut the margin to 69 – 73 with 20 seconds remaining but it wasn’t enough to change anything in the final outcome.
“It’s a bad start for us on home court this year; unfortunately, we didn’t control our emotions as we didn’t have the patience to follow the plan,” Olympiacos coach Giorgos Bartzokas said. “Poor execution on offense and we also allowed good shooters like Abrines and Laprovittola to have a field day”.
Nicolas Laprovittola (17 points, seven assists) and Alex Abrines (16 points on 5-7 triples) did most of the damage from Barcelona while Rokas Jokubaitis delivered 10 points plus four assists.
Thomas Walkup scored 14 points for Olympiacos, including consecutive buckets that put his team up by seven late in the game, but committed some five turnovers and made a couple of mistakes in the following plays. Alec Peters had 11 points and Nikola Milutinov dropped 10 points for the Reds who were without Nigel Williams-Goss, Luke Sikma, and Shaq McKissic.
Barcelona was up even by 15 points in the first half, 20 – 35 halfway through the second period. Olympiacos came back to reduce that margin to 34 – 40 at halftime and went up 42 – 40 in the third period.
“We had a very good first quarter on both offense and defense, having stopped their weapons and they have many,” Barca head coach Roger Grimau said during his post-game press conference.
“We played very well in the fourth down the stretch when we overturned a seven-point deficit into a win. They punished us with the pick and roll but we were able to fix that and come out on top.”