With difficulty...
Olympiacos made his 21st victory in 21 games and remains at the top of the Greek League ranking, but this one has been the toughest home victory for the "reds" up to now.
Only a few days before the play-offs against Siena and the minds of the Olympiacos players had probably been with the Italian team. Nevertheless, the Piraeus team managed to get a victory 73 – 70 against Ilisiakos thanks to their good shooting percentages during the last minutes of the game and the good defense of Michalis Pelekanos who stole the ball from Nikos Chatzis 20’’ before the end.
The quarters: 17-22, 38-33, 58-50, 73-70
Οlympiacos (Ivkovic): Papaloukas 8, Nesterovic 10, Gordon 6, Spanoulis 10, Bourousis 17 (1, 8reb.), Pelekanos 8, Μavrokefalides, Halperin 3 (1), Nielsen 6, Papanikolaou 2, Erceg 3 (1),
Ilisiakos (Flevarakis): Κaridas 2, Webb, Chatzis 16 (1), Papantoniou 16 (1), Κoukoulas, Τodic 2, Κaselakis 6, Baxter 19 (2), Galiotos 2, Dowson 9
DUSAN IVKOVIC: Congratulations to Ilisiakos for playing good basketball. I don’t have any explanations, nor do I look for alibis, or I say better it happened now rather than against Siena. The team hadn’t been ready and the responsibility is mine. We made 19 turnovers and 14 assists, we did not react against the double team nor did we have a clear head during the last seconds of the game. I’m not worried about 4/27 3-pointers, I’m worried about the easy baskets we received with fast breaks. We have to prepare the game against Siena on Tuesday and having been taught a very good lesson tonight along with the help of our fans we are going to have a good start.
TEO PAPALOUKAS: It has been a tough game. We have worked very hard at practices for the games against Siena. We knew we had to remain focused, Ilisiakos had nothing to lose and when you are under no pressure, the ball gets in. I think they chose to give us free shots, we did not make them and thus the rival built up their psychology. We have to keep going on; our mind had been on Siena, a very good team, prepared and with a full roster.
KOSTAS FLEVARAKIS: When a team fights such a game, you are satisfied but also, somewhat bitter, because you came so close to performing a small miracle and you missed your chance. We tried to adjust the game to our own standards, we showed we can fight against any team and despite the absence of Alexis Kyritsis, a very important player for us, we performed well.
NONTAS PAPANTONIOU: We played one of our best game, we really tried and gave Olympiacos, which is probably the best team in Europe, a hard time. Our goal still remains to save the big category and we have a very critical game against Panellinios ahead of us.