By Antonis Stroggylakis / info@eurohoops.net
According to Jasikevicius, the refs played an important role at the start of the game: “Congrats to Olympiacos, we expected that kind of reaction, they are a championship with great experience. In the first quarter, they started great, but we couldn’t be aggressive. The fouls were 7-2 and we had 11-0 foul shots. We must talk about. It took away the aggression of our players. We didn’t get the respect we wanted. For sure it was not 50-50″.
However, Saras also admitted that Olympiacos reacted the way he expected to: “Olympiacos was desperate, they were fighting. We come back in the game, but Olympiacos made, in the end, some very tough shots. For my team that was a great experience, playing in such an atmosphere and I hope that they will understand what it takes to win that kind of games. We lost the rebounding battle, Olympiacos got 13 offensive rebounds. We must try hard in Kaunas”.
And that’s the bottom line in the playoffs. “It’s not only basketball. It’s more. You must keep your composure, you must be focused, you must play for 40 minutes. Zalgiris will not have a chance if we don’t do this. We fought, Olympiacos gave an even bigger fight. It was a great experience for the near future, I mean the next games of the series”, said Saras.
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