Difficult home test for Olympiakos, at 7th matchday of the Euroleague!
Piraeus hosts tonight (21:15Novasports Prime, News Bulletin 247, sport-fm.gr) at SEF on Monaco of Vasilis Spanoulisreturning home after two consecutive away matches and looking for their third straight win!
At 4-2 the “red and whites”, last week put on a commanding display in Munich and celebrated a comfortable 96-71 victory against Bayern. Dominating and having absolute control throughout the match, Giorgos Bartzokas’ team comfortably reached the positive result, having offensive pluralism, with all his players who stepped on the floor scoring.
It was preceded by a thriller victory over Maccabi Tel Aviv in Belgrade, while last Sunday (26/10) they easily prevailed over Mykonos, extending the winning streak (4 out of 4) at the start of this year’s Stoiximan GBL. Now, having a high morale, Olympiacos wants to build a winning streak in the Euroleague as well, given that it has four consecutive home games ahead of it. His match with Monaco will be followed two twenty-four hours later (31/10, 21:15) by that with Hapoel Tel Aviv of Dimitris Itoudis, while afterwards it will host Partizan and Zalgiris.
On the competitive side, Giorgos Bartzokas saw Fournier and Walkup return to full form last week, while Papanikolaou overcame the problems that kept him out of action against Bayern, being available again. Evans has joined team training and is counting down his return, but is still not 100% ready to compete, while Fal remains sidelined. Papanikolaou, who did not compete with Bayern and Mykonos, will normally be included in the squad.
“They are one of the most difficult teams to deal with in the Euroleague. One of the strongest teams, with a lot of experience, with players like Mirotic, Nedovic, James, who have a lot of experience from the tournament and of course a talented team with athleticism. I think our approach has to be that we shouldn’t look at our record, we shouldn’t look at what we’re going to do in the first round or what schedule we have after that. We have to look at this game, be very efficient, stick to our plan and in front of our audience to win, which of course will not be easy at all, it requires a good effort, a good performance. Overall I feel optimistic because our returning group has become more balanced right now, both in terms of playing time and in terms of sharing responsibilities leading up to the game. So our goal is to improve and show it tomorrow in the game”stated the coach of Olympiakos.
On the other hand, Monaco has a record 3-3troubling her friends quite a bit at the start of the season. It has defeated Dubai BC (103-81), Olympia Milano (79-82) and Valencia (90-84), but lost to Zalgiris (84-89) and Virtus Bologna (77-73), while last week it lost 85-77 to Hapoel Tel Aviv in Sofia. Tonight he will look for a big away win, while he will remain in our country, to face Panathinaikos on Friday (31/10, 20:00). Last Sunday (10/26) they beat Boulazac 92-85 for the French championship, where they have a 4-1 record.
In the competition, James and Tice rested in the championship game and will be available to Spanoulis, while Makoudu remains out of competition. Nick Calathes is one step away from moving to Belgrade for Partizan and thus will not compete.
The referees of tonight’s match will be Milivoje Jovcic (Serbia), Saulius Racis (Lithuania) and Alberto Baena (Spain).
The two teams met three times last season, with Monaco having two wins to Olympiakos’ one. For the regular season, the Piraeus won 89-80 at “Gaston Medecin”, while the team from the Principality won 80-77 in the SEF and 78-68 in the semi-final of the Abu Dhabi Final Four.
Source: Sport Fm
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