Bartzokas: «We must play with high intensity»

Our team's coach, Giorgos Bartzokas, talked about the game against Panathinaikos at the OAKA (08/11, 20:15 CET) during the scheduled media day and analyzed what Olympiacos must change compared to the latest 'eternal rivals' derby. 

"There are a lot of players who are more ready in terms of physical conditioning and competition wise, while we have also incorporated two more guards, McKissic and Goss since the last game we played against Panathinaikos. This can help us with our game's speed, and with execution on both ends of the floor. Our game plan is more prolific now and much more diverse and of course we must play with much higher intensity than our last game together, when we practically were reacting to what was happening instead of acting. Panathinaikos is an exceptional team, right now they are in very good shape, following their latest winning streak, with lots of offensive talent, with three players that are both facilitators and executioners, exactly the way we saw them play in their latest games. So, it's going to be interesting how we cope in that tough for us environment".  

«We must stay focused for 40 minutes»

On his part, Sasha Vezenkov stressed the following: "We saw what our mistakes were, Panathinaikos beat us in every aspect of the game during the League match up. Since then, we played two games where we had some very good periods of performance, we won both, our psychology is good... It's always hard to play at the OAKA, we have to stay focused on our game plan. Remain focused, stay together and do what we have to do for 40 minutes so as to contest the game".