Serelis: “We had a problem in defense in the first half – Papagiannis and Agravanis changed the match”

THE Panathinaikos struggled quite a bit for a half against the Pigeon bwinbut broke out in the third quarter and finally reached the victory (89-80), making it 2-1 in the series for the semi-finals of the Basket League!

After the match, Christos Serelis talked about the very bad first half defensively that his team did, stressing that the defensive presence of Agravani and Papagianni in the second part, he changed the image of the match.

His statements in detail:

“Today we didn’t start the game well defensively. We allowed Peristeri to score 49 points. And in that time it was important when some guys were on a good day and scored, but not as a team and as we wanted. This changed a lot in the next 15 minutes and the match was ruled a mercy. We did what we said in defense, we didn’t give many chances to Peristeri’s key players and that worked well in attack as well. They circulated the ball better and we got an assist. The series is 2-1 and the players have understood that nothing is easy and we have to fight and fight in all the games and I hope on Saturday we will be ready and go to the final.”

On the defensive problem with Francisco’s drives: “I think today because Francisco started with two threes, that we were sending him from the side we wanted, it made us more passive and weaker against him. He finished the half with 6 assists and 18-20 points. As you understand when you allow a player to perform like that it is difficult. That’s why we said in the second half to be aggressive. And the team was more focused and more general in all players and so we got away with 20 points and put Peristeri in the third period only 10 points”.

On the imbalance in perimeter and racket defense: “Gudaitis is always a fighter. We saw a serious problem in defense in the first half mainly with Francisco and that confused us a bit. And our tall players stayed back a bit to protect those drives. But in the second half Papagiannis started with Agravanis and they were correct in defense. And that played a role in us accepting 10 points. The whole team wanted to win because Saturday’s defeat paid for us and that might create stress. At halftime we cleared our minds.”