By Antonis Stroggylakis/ info@eurohoops.net
With Khem Brich dominating both ends of courts during the final strech, Olympiacos defeated Brose Bamberg 83 – 77 to clinch victory no. 14 in the EuroLeague regular season despite playing without Giorgos Printezis who was injured during warm ups.
The Canadian center scored 8 crucial points out of his total number of 15 in the last minutes of the match, grabbed one offensive rebound after the other and played big defenses to repel his opponents comeback attempts from a 15-point deficit.
While the Bavarians were trailing 49 – 34 in the mid of the third quarter, they become dangerous as the game progressed by increasing their three-point stats and taking advantage of Oly’s hasty offensive choices.
Nicolo Melli (14 points, 4 rebounds), Janis Strelnieks (12 points), Nikos Zisis (13 points) and Darius Miller (13 points) helped Bamberg get back in the match, approaching 79 – 77.
But then Birch (15 points, 14 rebounds took over and along with Vassilis Spanoulis (15 points, 6 assists) and Matt Lojeski (13 points) signed the 81 – 71 with 80 seconds to go, sealing a favorable result for the Reds.
Brose Bamberg fell to 7 – 13 record also paying for the bad start in the game and being unable to play its usually fluent offensive game. Coach Trinchieri’s players didn’t produce well, also because of Oly’s defense that Kostas Papanikolaou (12 points, 2 steals) paced.