THE Olympic it took a terrific finish in the match to pull off an 80-71 victory against Partisan at SEF for the 9th matchday of the Euroleague, with Giorgos Bartzokas noting the effort of his players in defense.
After the end of Olympiacos – Partizan, Giorgos Maprtzokas emphasized that his team started to play defense in the fourth quarter and that was the reason they finally managed to reach the victory.
Bartzokas’ statements
“The last quarter was something that… It was very important to win the game first of all. The score in the 4th quarter was 27-13. It seemed like we started playing defense. Up until then we hadn’t touched anybody. In these games, the contact, the duels are very important. We did a very poor job of it for three quarters. We played our normal defense in the fourth quarter. Even though we had more turnovers than assists, we were very consistent in the rebounds and finally we found a way to win the game which is very important for us”.
On Milutinov and his defenses at the end: “He was key to the game. That block, that defense at the end, was very important. But everybody. We started playing defense in the last quarter. We tried to cover what Partizan was trying to do. We didn’t let them score from the paint. We were naive at times, I don’t know. We thought they were going to pass outside and they had answers all the time in the paint. So once we started doing that, we won the game.”