By Eurohoops team / info@eurohoops.net
A tough-as-nails Olympiacos Piraeus team beat Barcelona 77 – 75 on the road in Game 1 of the EuroLeague playoffs. The Reds, who led in the entire second half, will look to get a 2-0 advantage Friday in the same arena as their opponents need to tie the series.
Combined with Fenerbahce Beko’s win at AS Monaco and Maccabi Tel Aviv beating Panathinaikos Athens at OAKA, this result marked the first time that three visiting teams get victories in Game 1.
Nigel Williams-Goss led 11 Olympiacos scorers with 15 points while Isaiah Canaan had 14 points, including a big triple with the score 67 – 69. Filip Petrusev, who was helped off the floor following an apparent knee injury in the last minute, contributed all of his 12 points in the first half while grabbing five rebounds. Their team, that was without captain Kostas Papanikolaou, closed halftime up 35 – 44 and went ahead even by 13 (47 – 60) late in the third quarter.
“It’s playoff basketball,” Canaan said. “We’re coming in against a tough team, a good team. To win at their homecourt is kind of tough. We preached all week. Stay together, that it’s going to take everybody. And that’s what it took tonight.” Every Olympiacos players scored except Thomas Walkup (5 assists)
“Our objective was com here and get a win. But we’re not finished,” Canaan added. “After tonight, 12 o’ clock we’re going to move on and get to the next one.”
“We controlled the pace of the game. We had good selections,” Olympiacos coach Giorgos Bartzokas said. “Barca has great players full of talent and big personality and made some really difficult shots to get back in the game. But we managed to win the game although we played almost the entire second half without Thomas Walkup and Moustapha Fall was fouled out. We had some issues problems during the game but we overcame all these to get a very important win.”
A thrilling finale
Jabari Parker (13 points, seven rebounds) and Willy Hernangomez (13 points, five boards) were the top contributors for Barca overall. In his best game since his return to the EuroLeague, Ricky Rubio had 10 points and seven assists while being responsible for the play that could’ve turned the game upside down in crunch time.
With 1:03 to play and the score 70 – 75 after multiple Barca comeback attempts from down double figures (even 13 points), Rubio won an unsportsmanlike foul by Thomas Walkup, an opportunity for his team to even tie the score. He went 2-2 from the line and Nicolas Laprovittola made a bad pass, sending the ball out of bounds.
On the other end, Giannoulis Larentzakis, who substituted injured Petrusev, went 2-2 from the line despite coming to the court cold off the bench.
Willy Hernangomez came close to a 3-point play but won just the foul, shooting 1-2. Barca didn’t foul but the clock was running out in Olympiacos’ favor.
“We played much better defense in the second quarter but we still weren’t comfortable on offense,” Barca coach Roger Grimau said. “We allowed them to score too easy in the first half.”