Bartzokas: "Papanikolaou's mental strength is very important"

Olympiacos' coach, Giorgos Bartzokas, after the away victory over Alba, praised the selflessness of the team's captain, Kostas Papanikolaou, who, despite losing his beloved grandfather, did not mention it to anyone and played the game as usual.

Specifically, in his initial statement, he said: "An important win for us, we need one more to ensure we finish first in the standings. This is something we highly appreciate, and it’s not easy in a really competitive league where many teams struggle to even make it into the play-ins. At this moment, the team has to deal with many absences due to injuries, but we expect some players to return very soon. We have the game against Maccabi next week, and after that, we will try to be as competitive as possible in the playoffs."

Regarding the game, he initially focused on the mental strength of Kostas Papanikolaou: "As for the game, I would like to highlight something very important for us. Our captain, Kostas Papanikolaou, lost his beloved grandfather yesterday and did not mention it to anyone. He played this game, helped the team, and will leave early in the morning to attend the funeral. For us, his mental strength to play the game is very significant. This shows again how important a leader he is for our team."

In closing, he congratulated Alba, stating: "They are a very interesting project, with the way they play. They have one more assist than us. I like the way they play, with high intensity. They just need to get through this difficult season and get back on a winning track."

When asked if the difference in Olympiacos' offensive output was due to a lack of energy or improvement from Alba, he replied: "It's both. We scored 61 points and then tried to manage the game. We came here with 11 players, and Keenan Evans didn't play in the end. We didn't want to take any risks, so we ended up with 10 players. I think the energy and the high intensity of the game didn't help us play the game the way we wanted until the end. We expected Alba to come back into the game. We just had to be patient and not rush, but we wanted to win the game from the 25th minute. We needed to have patience and pass the ball. When we did that, we found open shots. But you don’t play alone, Alba played good defense in the second half, hit big shots, and of course, they were very aggressive on the offensive rebound."

Regarding what changed for Alba in the second half, he said: "They played together. I believe that, in my philosophy, passing the ball is the most important thing. They created many open shots, which I always appreciate. Alba is a good team; they played very well against Panathinaikos, Baskonia. Maybe their focus is more on the German league. The fact that the team is last but had 10,000 fans supporting them tonight shows that they are a big club."

When asked about Keenan Evans, who didn’t get any playing time, he said: "We were thinking about putting him in tonight, but in the end, I decided during the game to give him another week of practice with the team. He has only had 3 practices with the team so far, so it’s better for him to have 3 more sessions and be more ready to play the next game."