Vassilis Xanthopoulos emphasized that Peristeri never entered the match against PAOK and did not exert energy neither in defense nor in attack, he was disappointed by the appearance and not by the bad one, as he characterized it as a defeat, he focused on the lost rebounds, which equalized the good three-point percentages and asked them to play faster.
In detail: “As far as the game is concerned, certainly from the beginning of the game we didn’t go in like we said we would. PAOK was coming from a difficult game 65 hours earlier, while we managed. We knew that against PAOK we would want enough intensity. As many matches as our team has won, they won them from intensity. Either in defense or in attack. Unfortunately we never got into the game, it’s a bad defeat. At some point it would come, we expected it. I don’t care if we lose if someone plays better than us or makes the shots. I care that we go home having played 100%. Today we didn’t. We will see our mistakes and prepare against Brno.”
On whether it was the rebounds or the three-pointer: “We had a good three-point percentage, but the issue was the rebounds and, mainly, the offensive ones. We knew that PAOK goes for offensive rebounds, the whole team. Nevertheless, we will see the matches again. Many of the offensive rebounds were 50-50 possessions. When you want to beat PAOK away from home, you have to take these possessions.”
On what a bad loss means: “We didn’t play well. I explained it. Today we didn’t give 100%. PAOK is a very good team, but we were not here. It shows from the rebounds. As you have seen, in this year’s championship there are no subordinate teams. Apart from Panathinaikos and Olympiakos. everybody can beat everybody. I believe we will see the most competitive championship in history. We want to play fast as a team. Sometimes we rush shots. We have found ourselves back on the scoreboard again, like with Bilbao, and we ‘turned’ the match around. There we went to the rebounds, we had 17 offensively against a high team, like Bilbao. We will sit down to look at the mistakes and correct them.”
Source: Sport Fm
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