By Lefteris Moutis/ moutis@eurohoops.net
Brent Petway talks about the experience of playing as a center against CSKA’s giants and describes again for Eurohoops.net the final three minutes of the game and his emotions during the overthrow.
He belongs to the “featherweight” category of power forwards, but when Giannis Sfairopoulos decided to take on the big bodies of CSKA, he put Brent Petway at the center position (with Dimitris Agravanis also in this role). And the American power forward did great: “It was strange for me, but I know I can guard whoever is assigned to me. I used to be a ‘3’ and now I’ll be a center, but in order for us to achieve our goal, I’ll do whatever is necessary.”
– What is it like, though, to play for so long in 1v1 battles against such massive players like Kaun?
“Bless the coaching staff. Our trainer Andreas Gatzoulis helped me all along to get strong enough and not feel weak against such giants. Unfortunately we had some foul trouble and the coach decided to use short line-ups in order to hit the pick-and-rolls. We got some rebounds and CSKA didn’t take advantage of the mismatches.”
– Yes, but the plan was not effective until the 37th minute, when Olympiacos was at -9. That is, until Spanoulis got his first basket.
“At that moment I said, ‘Let’s go guys, we’re on a roll.’ When I turned and saw him take the shot, I said ‘Hold on, we have a game here.’ I saw everyone’s faces and I understood that we were going to turn the game around. And then we started: Boom, boom, boom! We waited for that shot a long time and when it came it changed the game.”