Final 8: Bartzokas - Peters about the final
Olympiacos bested Promitheas and tomorrow (18/02) will compete for the second title of the season, the Greek Cup title, vs Panathinaikos.
"It was a game similar to the one against Peristeri", the 'red & whites' coach, Giorgos Bartzokas pointed out. "Promitheas is a very good team of the Basket League, that plays with intensity in defense and forced us to spend energy. I repeat, that the trap is that everyone thinks it's a given that we would win even before the game is played, but it's not like that at all. We put in effort, as you all witnessed. We had a good third quarter when the margin opened up to twenty points and then we were naive enough to believe that Promitheas will quit the game. We made too many turnovers, sixteen is too many for the quality of our players and the preparation of the game. We had to protect the ball better, we knew about Promitheas' pressing. We appeared really naive in certain turnovers and relaxed after a certain point. On the other hand, we showed our level once again, we dished 26 or 28 assists, which is a really big number and it's very important for us to be playing like that. With the exception of period within the second quarter that we went too much on ball, with players that had the ball in their hands and wanted to execute without passing the ball more than 2 or 3 times. It was a point when Promitheas was following the score closely and gave us a hard time. But it was a fair win for us. Congrats to Promitheas for a very good performance in the tournament. Now we have the final ahead of us and of course it's a totally new game, completely different to the ones we have played before".
Asked if Nigel Williams-Goss will play tomorrow, he answered: "His MRI was clear, but his posterior femoral is tight and he's having treatments. We'll know tomorrow. Right now, I don't even know".
On his part, the American forward, Alec Peters, stressed: "These Cup games are never easy. All teams are ready to play and make it hard for us. I'm very happy we won, we took the second step and we are now in the final to compete for the Cup title, which means a lot to us".