Niklas: “After Christmas we will be better”

Thanos Niklas emphasized that the Olympiakos basketball players deserve congratulations for the effort against Mersin and the work they do in training, he believes that they looked competitive in the third quarter and paid for their mistakes, setting the tone for next Saturday’s matches for the championship.

In detail: “First of all, I want to congratulate the girls for the performance and the reaction because we had a period where we didn’t perform the way we wanted to. However, we are trying in training, it is still too early. Usually, after Christmas we perform, but today we showed in the most demanding game that we can be competitive and claim victories.

I think in the third quarter we fell behind due to our own mistakes, but now we have to put this game behind us because on Saturday we have an official match for the Greek league and we have to be focused. Congratulations on the appearance and let’s continue.”

Ivana Raja added: “We showed up focused from the beginning, because in the two previous Euroleague games we didn’t come in focused and we weren’t in our game plan. Today, we said we have to come in focused and we succeeded.

We had a good first half and I think that will give us confidence going forward. We showed that this is the image of Olympiakos that can face a Final-4 team, such as Mersin. I believe we will do better in the future.”