By Eurohoops team / info@eurohoops.net
Olympiacos Piraeus faced a huge challenge against ASVEL Villeurbanne at home before ultimately taking a 94 – 92 win to extend its EuroLeague streak to 4-0.
ASVEL was leading almost the entire game and was up even by 14 in the middle of the third period. The French side actually never trailed since the very first minutes, until Thomas Walkup drained a triple to make 87 – 96 with 2:26 to play.
“It was a really stressful night for us after the three wins we had in a row in the EuroLeague,” Bartzokas said. “Probably our mindset was wrong at the beginning of the game. Of course, ASVEL began the game shooting 9 out of 11 threes. But it’s how we started the game defensively. We just had four fouls in 17 minutes. Although we had the opportunity to stop transition situations or closeout. We didn’t foul and we made them feel comfortable on the floor”.
“From this perspective, I consider this win as a really important win,” Bartzokas added. “Congratulations to ASVEL, they played well. They are a difficult team to play against. Maledon was amazing and the entire team was aggressive in the rebounds.”
Olympiacos was coming off a big road win over archrival Panathinaikos Athens last Friday (9/11).
Unlike that game, the Reds didn’t manage to have the proper mentality from the get-go, Bartzokas believes: “We failed to have the right way of thinking. You set the tone of the game from the start. They scored with over 80 percent, which means that we didn’t do something well on the defensive end. Then we were hasty on offense, some of our players maybe thought it was an opportunity to feel better. The tempo was to ASVEL’s favor.”
In the end, a victory is a victory and Bartzokas commended some of his guys for pulling off tough winning plays down the stretch.
“It’s relieving [to win on a bad night]. We have some players that had some big moves. Fournier’s triple after Vezenkov’s pass. Or Walkup’s triple from a Milutinov pass. “
Photo credit: Eurokinissi