Still at the top
Olympiacos had no problem leaving Lamia as the winner of the game against Panellinios. With Papanikolaou and Mavrokefalides as his top players, the ‘reds’ controlled the rhythm from the beginning and reached an easy victory 92-65.
Dusan Ivkovic’ team began the game in an impressive way with the support of 500 fans. The lead quickly reached two digit numbers and remained there to the end.
Τhe quarters: 17-32, 41-56, 53-75, 65-92
Panellinios (Skourtopoulos): Xanthopoulos 4, Papamakarios 8(2), Bailey 12(1), Κalaitzis 9(1), Krabbenhoft 2, Κarathanasis 2, Sklavos 5, Udrih 10, Brown 2, Ostojic 9, Kompodietas, Τsakaleris 2.
Οlympiacos (Ivkovic): Papaloukas 2, Nesterovic 10, Gordon 2, Spanoulis 12(1), Bourousis 10, Κeselj 3, Μavrokefalides 18, Halperin 2, Νielsen 9, Papanikolaou 15(2), Katsivelis.
DUSAN IVKOVIC: We played 4 away games in the last 11 days with many trips. We wanted to last long into the game, but we didn’t do so today. We received 24 points in the second quarter and we hadn’t been good. It’s not possible for Olympiacos’ opponent to have a 59% at 2-point shots. We were better in the second half.
LOUKAS MAVROKEFALIDES: It was a very good game. We shoudn’t be facing these problems in defense in the second quarter and that’s something we have to improve through practice.
THANASSIS SKOURTOPOULOS: Olympiacos has much better quality than us. We are very weak in the basket and we did not pay the price against the Dutch, but today things were different. The three up-coming games in the Greek League mean the whole season to us. I hope that we will become better through the Eurocup games. We have also been unlucky due to injury problems. Apart from Byers and Kolokas, Udrih was playing with food poisoning.
SAMO UDRIH: We knew it would be a difficult game. We played horrible defense in the first half and despite we tried a lot in the second half it was very difficult for us to have a good game.