By Eurohoops team / info@eurohoops.net
Anadolu Efes shocked everybody to start the EuroLeague action on Friday, beating the reigning EuroLeague champions Panathinaikos 93-67 and leaving Ergin Ataman’s team hopeless.
Most importantly, the two-time back-to-back EuroLeague champs welcomed Shane Larkin back, as the team’s superstar played only five games this season prior to tonight’s winning clash. In the post-game flash interview, Tomislav Mijatovic welcomed him back.
“It’s our franchise player, he’s our team’s captain. I think our guys did a tremendous job in the past month and a half fighting for him and for the team, it’s now easy to replace anybody and it’s not easy to play without your team captain”, Anafolu Efes’ coach first reacted.
“Today, of course, the cherry on top: Shane came back, the effort was there, energy was there. That’s the way we want to look at every game, this is our goal”, Tomislav Mijatovic then continued.
The Turkish team’s head coach praised the whole team’s character tonight. “Our guys from day one are buying into the system, they’re playing hard, sometimes we have some difficulties, injuries, like everybody has but we fight through those”, he first stated.
“Today, everyone fought from the beginning till the end. We needed to put our maximum effort to win, we did that. That’s the way to go, we need to keep improving every day and every week. Every game is a new challenge, a new chapter, a new opportunity to win and improve”, the Croatian continued.
Rodrigue Beaubois and Dan Oturu contributed too
Dan Oturu led the way with the highest PIR (21) on the Turkish team and commented on playing against Mathias Lessort tonight. “He is a really good player, one of the best bigs in all Europe. With him, you just got to come prepared and be ready to compete. We play hard every single night against the best bigs, you need to come and match his energy”, he said in the post-game.
“We feel great, we need to build from it. Tonight was a great teamwork, everybody contributed and did a great job. We have potential, but we need to have mentality: tonight, we had it. We need to use this game to go forward”, Rodrigue Beaubois also said after the win.
The French player led in scoring with 16 points. “We wanted to be aggressive because against Zalgiris we got clearly dominated on that aspect. I’m happy we showed another face. We need to keep building, when we play like this we’re very difficult to beat”, the former Dallas Mavericks guard also continued.
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