«No matter who comes in from the bench, the level stays the same»

The coach of Olympiacos, Giorgos Bartzokas, explained the score against Promitheas Patras as a result of the ‘reds’ roster quality.

“I would like to congratulate our players and thank our fans for the support. We won a team that we believe to be among the 3-4 top in Greece. They have a good front line with three athletic Amaricans, they have Agravanis and Tanoulis, good shooters in the perimeter and good guidance from coach Casimiro. We had pointed out to our players that they shouldn’t be expecting an easy game. That proved the be the case in the first half… Also, as you can understand, our minds were still preoccupied with the fatigue due to the double game Euroleague week we have had, with a 45 minute game in Barcelona, plus the trip. However, we remained serious for forty minutes and relied on the consistency our roster can provide us with. No matter who comes in from the bench, the level or intensity do not wane. So, at some point, Promitheas lost touch with the score and the game ended the way it did. Again, congratulations to our players. Now we need to prepare for the game against CSKA”.  

On his part, the coach of the Patreas team, Luis Casimiro, pointed out: “We were competitive in the first half, however, when we received easy buckets in the post, we also received some threes and weren’t able to control the rebounds. These were the keys that allowed Olympiacos to get an 11 point difference. In the second half, we played better during the first minutes, more aggressively in the back court, we controlled the rebounds, ran the fast break, scored easy points and closed in at five. However, following Olympiacos’ time out, we made a lot of turnovers, we did not control the rebounds, did not foul and our opponent that played good till the end controlled the game.