By Stefan Djordjevic / info@eurohoops.net
In a game that went down to the wire, Panathinaikos OPAP grabbed a 78-76 road win to start its 2020-21 Turkish Airlines EuroLeague season.
Ioannis Papapetrou was the hero of the night for Panathinaikos with his 16 points and a putback while fouled at 1:47 left, putting his squad up 76-73.
Tough defense and calm free-throw shooting closed the deal for PAO, despite an amazing triple by Dairis Bertans which was his first of the game.
A big part of Papapetrou’s points also came from tough fadeaway shots while he also grabbed eight boards and dished three assists. He got some help from Dinos Mitoglou with 12 points and nine rebounds while Ben Bentil scored 11.
“We knew that it was going to be tough because we were gone so long. But I think we came and fought and that is most important. We refused to lose. During the game we made mistakes. We played good for some parts but we made mistakes and Khimki came back. But we didn’t give up. We played harder and tried to play better defensively and got all the rebounds, which helped us a lot. And in the end we came out on top,” Papapetrou said.
For Khimki, Devin Booker scored 15 in addition to Bertans’ 14. Jonas Jerebko logged nine points as well as nine boards. Alexey Shved, Stefan Jovic and Errick McCollum weren’t available to the Russian squad.
As the two coaches tried to outsmart one another with the lineups, changing up their so far regular starters, Panathinaikos was off to a better early game as they went up 24-11.
It was the size of the Greek squad that gave much trouble to Khimki, especially Konstantinos Mitoglou, Georgios Papagiannis and Zach Auguste who garnered much attention in the paint while PAO’s rotations also opened up some room for the guards to penetrate.
Their 8-11 from inside was that much more potent considering that nether squad could find their rhythm from deep. Khimki waited for its first three-pointer 15 minutes as the rivals combined for 3-22.
Nemanja Nedovic took four attempts from deep for PAO but the guard missed all of them along with two free throws. He scored just two points for the half which hurt the ‘Greens’ quite a bit since he’s been a high-volume scorer so far this season.
Things would’ve been much worse for Khimki was it not for Devin Booker who scored 11 points early with a few dunks and kept the Russians alive while Dairis Bertans sparked a comeback with two ‘and ones’.
.@DevinBooker31 making the rim sufferpic.twitter.com/yiShaP2p0n
— Eurohoops (@Eurohoopsnet) October 2, 2020
Eventually, the sides balanced out and PAO went to the halftime rest with a slight advantage (41-39).
It should be noted that both Booker and Janis Timma logged three fouls early on and the latter got his fourth at the start of the second half which sidelined him for a while and eventually got him out of the game due to the fifth.
On the other side, Mitoglou and Nedovic got things going for PAO with a few threes but the Greeks suffered from turnovers and a one-man run by Vyacheslav Zaytsev pushed Khimki to 62-59.
The match stayed close throughout the last period with Khimki taking over the boards and loose balls with a commendable effort, however, Papapetrou’s heroics and steel defense pushed PAO to the win.
“If you want to win at Khimki you need to control the turnovers. We did a great job in this situation and I think we deserve the win. As I said from the first day, this team has a mentality and it must start with defense. If we play this defense every game, it doesn’t matter if we score offensively or not – we made only 5 of 23 three-point shots – you can still have a chance to win,” PAO coach Georgios Vovoras said in the post-game press conference.