By Michalis Gkiouneloglou / info@eurohoops.net
Olympiacos center Nikola Milutinov explained how his team improved over the last two weeks to register three straight EuroLeague wins, including a road victory over archrival Panathinaikos Athens.
“The [Greek League] loss [to Panathinaikos] was also a factor in the previous games,” Milutinov told Eurohoops after the win at Panathinaikos. “We honestly played a very bad game. It’s a shame to play a bad game in front of our fans. You cannot allow this especially in a derby. After that game, we got ourselves in the locker rooms to talk with each other. We said that we cannot allow this to happen again I think from that moment, we started to improve our game, we started to play better and we showed what we can do.”
Milutinov had 12 points and eight rebounds against Panathinaikos, exactly the numbers he posted in the home win over Barcelona last Thursday. The Serbian big man also collected six offensive boards for a second straight game.
“It’s very early,” Milutinov added. “We still have to stay humble and we still have to work hard. It’s a long way ahead of us. We have to improve our game.”
After Panathinaikos’ away win over Olympiacos in the Greek League, Juancho Hernangomez commented that it’s not a “huge” win for his team. That result mattered a lot though for Milutinov and the Reds.
“For us, it was a bad loss because we put ourselves in a bad position in the Greek League,” Milutinov said. “But it’s still very early this season. Even this win… we didn’t win the EuroLeague with this. It just puts us in a good position. We’re going to try to continue this streak we have now and improve the game. ”