By Luca Chiabotti
It’s the same match up, but in the same time completely different. Siena and Olympiacos will meet again. One year before the underdog team won the series, after an unexpected heavy – considering the playing history of the team – defeat in the first game. And Siena did not have in the court its best player, Bo McCalebb.
This time Siena is the favorite, even thought it had unexpected results in its home court, like in the game against Unics Kazan. This season Siena took the opposite course to Olympiacos. The Italians added two European stars to their roster, David Andersen and Igor Rakocevic, when in Piraeus the years of the stars are gone, and only Spanoulis remains, as a part of a system more close to the principals of coach Ivkovic.
Does this means that Siena will be in the Final Four? The predictions are favoring her, but there also variables that favor Olympiacos. The first one of them is that the Reds are more fresh, they have the mentality and the physicality of a unit with many young Greek players, not just Papanikolaou whose basketball ceiling is still unknown, after a season where he is growing fast and continuously.
There is good physical condition, excitement and a team that is first in the Greek league standings. And there is not any burden from last’s years games against Siena, because almost every key-player is changed.
The second variable is that Siena is an old team, with key-player that can’t be in the court for more than 20 minutes in a game of Euroleague play offs level. The prime example is Lavrinovic. Andersen and Stonerook play a lot, but their physical condition is not the best. That means that Siena is relatively weak in the front line and it’s not a coincidence that Bourousis of Armani Milano had his best game against them. The paint is not the strong point of Olympiacos either, but the Reds have to strike there. And if the team of Duda succeeds in slowing the tempo, it will have better chances to be in the final four.
What happened with Milano and Cantou
Milano is the Italian team that didn’t meet the expectations this year in Euroleague, and they were high when in the last summer Bourousis, Fotsis and Nicholas were signed. But suddenly the team had too many new players, that they had to adapt to the a new system. After an encouraging start (but with Danilo Gallinari on board), the EA7 had been into a slump and only in the last games of Top 16 could compete with the best of Euroleague. But then, it as too late…
Cantou lost the qualification to the play offs from the Euroleague surprise team, Bilbao, because the Italians did their best only at home, something that was evident in the two games (home and away) against Olympiacos. Those are two good teams, they chase Siena in the Italian League, but they are still behind for the same reasons that make difficult for Ivkovic to return in the Final Four.