By Antonis Stroggylakis/ info@eurohoops.net
With three minutes remaining in the game of Olympiacos and Valencia, the score was 68 – 67. Everything was up for grabs and the Spanish side believed that they could leave Piraeus with a mighty upset in their hands.
Then again, Vassilis Spanoulis had a different opinion.
The captain of Olympiacos scored seven points in a row to set a new season-high with 25 and pretty much single-handedly lead his team to an 80 – 70 victory over the Spanish League champions.
Spanoulis also finished with 9 assists and a season-high 29 PIR in what was arguably his top performance in the current campaign. Nikola Milutinov also contributed big for the Reds with 15 points and 6 rebounds. This duo was basically the backbone of an otherwise predictable Olympiacos offense, in the team’s 16th victory in 23 games of the EuroLeague regular season.
Valencia fought pretty hard against the Greek side, reacting following the double-digit deficit they suffered in the first quarter (22-11) but couldn’t finish the job in the end.
The “Taronja” balanced the game thanks to a Fernando San Emeterio dropping 14 out of his 19 points in the first half to help his team go to the locker room down only by one, 40 – 39.
Erick Green (13 points, 9 in the second half) and Will Thomas (11 points) took the torch from San Emeterio and kept their team more than competitive after the break. The latter also did damage by posting up his opponents in order to make it a one-point game late in the match.
But Spanoulis took over and Olympiacos had the final say. Thus Valencia fell to 8 – 15, losing all mathematical chances they had for the playoffs.
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