Bartzokas: «I think we have a good record» (vid)

The coach of Olympiacos, Giorgos Bartzokas, expressed his satisfaction not only in relation to the win against Alba, but also about his team’s winning record up to now.

“It was a must-win game for us and unfortunately we had to play against, according to my opinion, one of the most difficult teams in the Euroleague right now. I can explain exactly what I mean. We are talking about the team that before tonight’s game, had been first in assists in the Euroleague and they play at a very high tempo, even after scoring, they run the transition with five players, the pass a lot, they facilitate open shots with the same capability, not only with set offenses but also in transition”.  

And he went on with his analysis: “It was a game following that against Maccabi and we also have to count the trip. As you know, we came back to Athens in the early hours of Wednesday and we had to spend a great amount of energy tonight and put in a huge effort to win. In this season’s Euroleague, if I’m not mistaken, Alba has had seven losses in a row and they’ve been playing the way everyone here witnessed tonight! To beat this team, you have to be mentally, physically and tactically ready. You have to try hard. Congratulations to Alba but also to my players. I think that our winning record up to now is a good one. We are at about 33% of the regular season games and we are more or less doing well up to now”.

On his part, Alba’s coach, Israel Gonzalez, commented: “Congratulations to Olympiacos for the win, but also about the way they’ve been playing this season. I think that right now, they are playing the best basketball in Europe. We played a good game. We played mentally focused and tried to execute our plan to the best of our abilities. However, we were playing against a very good team and it was hard. We did not have enough energy in the last five minutes, we did not have fuel in our tank and were not able to remain competitive”.