A comfortable win over Unicaja

A winning start for Olympiacos in the “Costa del Sol” tournament. Despite many and important absences (Printezis, Papanikolaou, Mantzarsi, Milutinov, Strelnieks, Timma and Vezenkov were with their respective National Selections), the ‘reds’ overcame Unicaja Malaga 94-77 and tomorrow (14/09, 21.00) will be playing against Real Madrid.

The ‘reds’ began rather slow resulting in trailing by 9 (16-7) at 5’. However, at that point, Vassilis Spanoulis gave the signal for the counter attact… With good defense and good perimeter percentages, our team responded with a partial 18-4 and went ahead with 5 (25-20 at 8’).
Blatt’s players closed the first quarter leading 31-29, while the saw that the difference got to +11 during the next five minutes (31-42, at 15’). Turnovers and poor offensive choices allowed Malaga to close in at 4p. (40-44, however, Axel Toupane scored from behind the three point line and led Olympiacos to the locker rooms with a +7 (40-47).

Relying on good perimeter percentages, Unicaja Malaga turned the game around in the second half and got to lead by 3 (59-56 at 26’). However, Olympiacos put more pressure in the defense, passed the ball in the post when attacking and regained control (67-72, at 30’). They did not stop there… With pressing defense and offensive pluralism, the ‘reds’ completely controlled the tempo (73-85, at 37’) and reached a comfortable final +17 (77-94).

Our team coach, David Blatt, commented afterwards: “It was a very good scrimmage for us. Malaga is at a similar state to ours, however, they played in front of their fans. Having played in a packed gym is a very good experience for all our players. We performed well and that’s good for the progress we want to be doing during this difficult period due to the National teams and the absent players”.

The quarters: 29-31, 40-47, 67-72, 77-94.