By Eurohoops Team/ info@eurohoops.net
The Panathinaikos Athens frontline duo of Mathias Lessort and Dinos Mitoglou were a force to be reckoned with against shorthanded Baskonia to lead their team to a 95 – 81 win.
Lessort put on 23 points and 14 rebounds while Mitoglou had 23 points of his own and was particularly instrumental in the fourth period to help Panathinaikos overcome the tough Baskonia side that essentially had an eight-man squad. The Greek forward took over with eight points over the first five minutes of the final quarter to put his team up 81 – 68, their largest lead in the game.
“The credit goes to my teammates. They found me well tonight,” the French center reacted to his best individual scoring showing in the Turkish Airlines EuroLeague.
“I am very happy for him,” he added on Mitoglou, “He worked very hard in practice. He was not available and we missed him a lot at the beginning of the season. He is coming back. He is not even in shape yet. He helped us a lot.”
“I want to give credit to him. He played very well tonight,” the Greek forward responded with similar praise.
When Baskonia cut the margin to single digits in a last stand, Mitoglou drained the triple to bring Panathinaikos advantage to 84 – 72. Jerian Grant then added a 3-pointer of his own for the 87 – 74 with 2:13 to push away the visiting squad back for good.
“Sometimes we played well, but we also made some ridiculous mistakes,” Ergin Ataman commented on his side’s performance in Round 5 of the EuroLeague Regular Season.
Apart from Lessort and Mitoglou, Kyle Guy and Kostas Sloukas added 13 and 12 points, respectively.
Markus Howard led Baskonia with 22 points while Nico Mannion and Vanja Marinkovic dropped 17 points apiece. Their team was missing Nikos Rogkavopoulos, Khalifa Diop and Dani Diez while Chima Moneke traveled to Athens but didn’t enter the game at all.
“I am proud of my players. I think we played a good game,” mentioned the losing head coach Joan Penarroya, “We needed more energy in the last ten minutes.”
Panathinaikos jumped to 2-3 forcing the shorthanded opponents to 1-4.
“They faced a lot of injuries,” noted Lessort, “We tried to use that the best way possible. It was a big opportunity for us and we made the best out of it.”
In Round 6, the Greens will take on FC Barcelona on the road on Friday, after facing archrival Olympiacos in a domestic affair on Monday. In turn, Baskonia will host Partizan Mozzart Bet on Friday.