By Panagiotis Loutas/ info@eurohoops.net
In the night during which Dimitris Diamantidis broke the all time Euroleague record of Theodoros Papaloukas with 978 career assists, Panathinaikos got the win over CSKA Moscow (65-59) and lived to fight an other day, even if the Russians still have the 2-1 lead.
Stephan Lamse with just 13 points was the top scorer of the winners, Zack Wright added 10, but Panathinaikos’ trademark this Euroleague season is defense, so that was no surprise. What nobody was expecting was the low scoring night of CSKA Moscow which was held to just 59 points without scoring in the last three minutes and 21 second of the game. Despite their theoretical front line advantage the Russians also missed the rebounding battle, as the Greens had 35 in the end against 26. Sonny Weems scored 14 points and Vitaly Fridzon was the only other double digits scorer of the game with 10.
Αfter the game coach Alvertis said: “We are playing at home in front of our fans. We can do some really, really good things”. Coach Messina admitted: “We tried hard, but not with the quality we needed in order to win. It was like Game 1, Panathinaikos got the lead and we made many mistakes. Now we are at 2-1 and we have to prepare for Game 4”. The owner of Panathinaikos Dimitris Giannakopoulos wasn’t satisfied by the referees: “We beat them too also, despite they had specific orders”.