By Eurohoops team/info@eurohoops.net
Georgios Bartzokas… returns to the Olympic Sports Center in Athens for another encounter against Panathinaikos, this time with Khimki (14/11, 21:15) for Round 7 of the EuroLeague, stirring up memories of dozens of clashes!
More or less, this clash will be number 41 between the Greens and Bartzokas, and those date back more than a decade.
The Maroussi coach came face to face with Panathinaikos throughout his professional and coaching career.
At first with Olympia Larissa, Maroussi and Panionios and then of course on Olympiacos’s bench, while in recent years he’s been doing so with foreign teams for the EuroLeague.
Panathinaikos at home, Bartzokas… away
In a total of 40 games in all competitions, Panathinaikos count 29 wins, while Bartzokas counts 11. However, the former coach of Olympiacos, has the upper hand in the EuroLeague, as Khimki will be the fifth team with which he will go up against the Greens and with the last four (Olympiacos, Maroussi, Lokomotiv Kuban and Barcelona) he has a 6-4 record in his favor!
In fact, the greatest of those victories came in 2010, when he was on the bench of Maroussi and had beat Panathinaikos 80-78 inside the Olympic Sports Center in Athens (essentially a home court for Maroussi since they used this arena in the EuroLeague) for the Top 16, causing incredible turmoil in the Greens.
Besides, Dimitrios Giannakopoulos’ barging in the locker room after that game has stayed in people’s memory, as has the reaction of the fans, who gathered en masse the next day at the Olympic Sports Center to support Zeljko Obradovic and his players.
Aside from that, it’s noteworthy that, in five visits to Panathinaikos’s home court, the record is 4-1 in favor of the Greens, with the exception being Bartzokas’ win with Lokomotiv (71-77) in the 2015/2016 season, in the first phase.