By Antonis Stroggylakis/ info@eurohoops.net
Real Madrid took its second road victory against Olympiacos in history by outplaying the Reds 73 – 79 in Piraeus.
Anthony Randolph and Sergio Llull were the pillars of the Madridistas’ game dropping 21 points apiece to help their team remain at the top of the EuroLeague standings, tied with CSKA Moscow at a 22 – 7 record.
They also provided elsewhere, with Randolph chipping in 5 rebounds and 4 blocks and Llull dishing out 5 assists.
For a Giorgos Printezis-less Olympiaocs, Nikola Milutinov set a new EuroLeague career-high with 18 points, Dimitris Agravanis scored 10 and Kostas Papanikolaou 11 while getting 6 rebounds. Coach Sfairopoulos’ squad generally dominated the boards with 21 offensive (!) rebounds against Real’s 7 but couldn’t take capitalize on this. They are now at a 19 – 9 and the most likely scenario is that they will end third in the regular season.
Real Madrid was simply the better team on the floor in the final 12 minutes. With their opponents up 52 – 49 near the end of the third quarter, they turned up their levels of aggressiveness closing the period ahead 54 – 58.
Randolph kept dominating his territory to preserve his team’s lead and when Othello Hunter (10 points) entered the scoring equation, Real Madrid got its biggest lead in the match, 63 – 72.
Olympiacos tried to come back but never managed to trim the deficit more than 3 points, 70 – 73.
The first half was totally balanced and not only because the two teams went to the locker rooms tied 37 – 37. With Milutinov scoring 9 points in the first seven minutes and winning all battles against Gustavo Ayon on both ends (the Mexican big guy had – 7 in PIR during that time frame), the Reds controlled the boards and closed the quarter ahead 20 – 19 after a buzzer beater by Llull.
It was Anthony Randolph’s presence that began making an impact on both ends for the “Blancos”. With Randolph scoring at will (he closed halftime with 11 points) and being particuarly terrifying on defense with 3 mean blocks, the Blancos went up by 28 – 30. Olympiacos caught up to make things even at the break.
The Reds managed to get a 52 – 49 lead near the end of the third but everything went downhill from there since Real Madrid controlled the action on both ends, to leave “Peace and Friendship” arena victorious.