By Achilleas Mavrodontis / info@eurohoops.net
After leaving France with the playoff series against Monaco tied 2-2, Olympiacos Piraeus center Moustapha Fall wants to see a noisy and packed Peace and Friendship arena that will give him and his teammates that extra push for the qualification to the Final Four.
“To pack the gym, to be loud much as possible and give us the energy to finish the job,” Fall told Eurohoops in a message for Olympiacos‘ fans.
Olympiacos was one shot away from actually accomplishing the Final Four mission in Gaston Medecin. Kostas Sloukas, one of the top players of the Greek powerhouse in both Game 3 and 4 overall, sent the ball to Fall in the last seconds and then misfired at the buzzer when he got the ball back from his big man.
“They switched,” Fall said while describing Olympiacos‘ last offense. “They put a lot of pressure on Sloukas. He saw he didn’t have many options. He saw me, he threw the ball high. It was a little bit fast, so I tried to catch it but I was off balance. I might’ve traveled, I don’t even know. They started to squeeze on me. I searched Sloukas, I kicked out the ball. He took the shot, he missed it but we live with that. We live with Sloukas taking the last shot.”
Game 4 didn’t end the way Fall and the rest of Olympiacos wanted but he was at least pleased with the fact that the series is coming back to Piraeus thanks to the win of his team in Game 3.
“We came here and we took what we wanted,” Fall said. “We wanted the homecourt advantage [back]. For sure we hoped we could’ve taken this one but if you told us before that we’ll come here and split the games, we’d be happy about that. We just need to focus and prepare for the game at home.”