By Eurohoops team/ info@eurohoops.net
Olympiacos snapped a three-game skid by defeating Bayern Munich 72 – 62 on the road for Round 8 of the EuroLeague regular season and improved to 4-4 thanks to a brilliant output in the fourth quarter.
“It was a battle. Both teams fought that battle. A fight like that isn’t always pretty. You got to find a way to win it,” Olympiacos head coach David Blatt in the post-game flash interview for EuroLeague.
In a generally defense-dominant game, things began happening to a game-changing extent in the offense of Olympiacos at the beginning of the final period. With the score 45 – 45, Janis Timma and Janis Strelnieks made back-to-back buckets, Zach LeDay delivered one of his own, while team captain Vassilis Spanoulis scored six points in a row to give his team a double-digit lead, 53 – 65 with 3:48 left on the clock.
Save for a pair of dunks following some impressive spin moves by Derrick Williams early in the fourth quarter and a contribution by Vladimir Lucic afterward, Bayern struggled against the defense of the “Reds” and was unable to provide a sufficient answer. When Strelnieks dropped the 3-pointer for the 58 – 70 and 1:22 remaining, it was all over.
While Strelnieks scored all of his 10 points in the fourth period, Zach LeDay had his first EuroLeague double-double with 12 points and 12 rebounds for 20 PIR. Nikola Milutinov added 11 points (including his first 3-pointer in EuroLeague) and seven rebounds and Giorgos Printezis had 10 points and five boards. Timma scored 10 and Spanoulis 9, apart from dishing four assists.
Derrick Williams (15 points, five rebounds) and Vladimir Lucic (15 points, four rebounds) were the only Bayern players in double figures. The Bavarian team is now 3-5 EuroLeague.