Olympiacos-Villeurban: To stay alive in the hunt for the top four, the “red and whites”

Olympiacos faces the Villerban at SEF (21:15, sport-fm.gr, bwinSPOR FM 94.6, Novasports Prime) for the 31st matchday of the Euroleague, looking for a reaction after its defeat by Efes in Istanbul last Tuesday night (19/3) .

In sixth place in the standings with a record 18-12 The Red and Whites saw their six-game winning streak come to an end last week after suffering an 85-72 loss to Efes. The team of Giorgos Bartzokas was tired on the court and did not manage to lead even once in the game, managing to reduce to a point (62-61) in the 29th minute, but bending in the fourth period and finally seeing the Turks reach a comfortable victory.

Now, Olympiacos is called upon to react immediately and return to positive results, in its attempt to keep alive its hopes of finishing this year’s EuroLeague season in first place. quartet of the standings, which means home field advantage in the playoffs. As far as racing is concerned, Giorgos Bartzokas will not have as much at his disposal again Mitrou-Longwho is suffering from a virus, as well as the injured Milutinov.

“Whoever expects a match that will be easy is wrong. Villerban beat Efes, they were winning by 20 points and yesterday they were ten points in the fourth period and in the end they lost to Partizan, which is a very good team. There is no indifferent match in the Euroleague. They are a team that has athleticism, they can open the scoring, they have experience in the regionals, they have been playing very well lately and we expect a difficult game. In no way is it procedural”said the coach of Piraeus ahead of tonight’s match.

On the other hand, Villerban is stuck in the penultimate position of the standings, with a record 7-23. Although it has no hopes of qualifying even in the play ins, Pierik Poupe’s team can do… damage, as it proved with its unexpected 84-80 victory over Efes last week. In their first game of the final week of the season, they battled it out, but were betrayed by their defense in a 98-90 loss to Maccabi Tel Aviv. They have celebrated only three victories in their 15 away games for this year’s Euroleague, while they have won only one of their 9 previous visits to the home of Olympiakos.

In the meeting of the two teams for the first round, on December 22 last year in Lyon, Olympiacos had celebrated the victory with 85-73with Kanaan (19p) and Peters (17p) as the leaders, while Paris Lee (16p, 7 assists) and Louvavou-Cambaro (16p) stood out for Villerban.

The referees of tonight’s match will be Robert Lottermoser (Germany), Thomas Travitsky (Poland) and Mario Majic (Slovenia).