He stood up for his team’s mistakes George Bartzokas after defeat of Olympiakos by Barcelona in Game 2 of the Euroleague playoffs, with the Greek coach congratulating the Catalans and assessing that the Kostas Papanikolaou will be available for the two matches at SEF.
What he said in detail at the press conference:
“I want to congratulate Barcelona, ​​they deserved the win. They played with desire. For the second match, we made too many mistakes and in the critical moments, when we came back and found ourselves in front of the score, we thought we could have made some better choices, some better decisions, in order to put pressure on our opponent.
But Barcelona scored immediately, got back into the game. In the 4th quarter we made three very critical communication errors on our defense that allowed our opponent to make open three-pointers that ultimately decided the outcome. The score is 1-1 and now we go to our stadium for two more matches. I think the matches will be like tonight’s. A real battle. Let’s prepare for it.
Barcelona is a great team, they have players with personality, they have the support of Palau. We should have started much better. We gave away 3-4 baskets and fouls at the start. All these games, this kind, toughness, contact and aggression are very important elements. The tension is high, so we shouldn’t have started like this. We gave them 23-24 points through the paint in the first half. We gave them seven offensive rebounds. It had to do with Barcelona’s desire to win. Perhaps we thought that with the victory in the first match we completed our mission here. But I don’t want to believe it. Every race is a different story.
I think we will have Papanikolaou. Today he trained individually at SEF, we have 2-3 training sessions to prepare. He is weak because he had a high fever, but I hope he will help us.”
Source: Sport Fm
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