By Eurohoops team / info@eurohoops.net
Zalgiris didn’t get the win against Maccabi and their head coach Sarunas Jasikevicius talked to the press conference about Norris Cole’s amazing performance but he also complained about the referees’ calls.
“We only hit shots in the second half. I believe for our young team, this is great experience to play in a gym like Yad Eliyahu. I was really afraid with all due respect to Maccabi, the coaches and the players, I really was more afraid of the atmosphere factor than the team factor. For some players it’s their first time playing in this gym. Here the atmosphere is second to none. It’s very difficult to come back from being 16 down, but we managed to. We started to play a little solid. We shortened the rotation with the players mainly that were here last year, that know the system and pick up the system… Hopefully the last 20 minutes is the idea of where we have to go and how we have to play.”
”We were risking Norris’ shots but tonight he was amazing. This is on me but I wouldn’t change it. The big difference was that Maccabi was tough from the beginning to the end and we were not. We are talking about huge difference in foul shots. We didn’t get the respect we deserve. We deserve equal respect. We are talking about a player, Aaron White, who tried to dunk five times and you saw how many calls he got. Zero. This is a respect factor.”.
Neven Spahija of Maccabi added: “I think even though we scored 10 threes today at 55%, we won the game on defense. We limited them, especially in the first half, and I think it was the key to the game. And like I’ve said many times, if you make some extra threes, it always helps… Zalgiris is a very good team. They are able to cover so many things. They play as a team, like I said in the pre-game… Today they surprised us by outrebounding us, but also we probably surprised them with other stuff and because of that we won the game.”