By Eurohoops Team/ info@eurohoops.net
It was one of the best playoff series ever in EuroLeague and it finished in a fitting, thrilling fashion.
With the support of a sold-out crowd in the Peace and Friendship Stadium, Olympiacos beat AS Monaco 94 – 88 in the decisive Game 5 to grab the last available Final Four spot and return to the tournament for the first time after 2017. The Reds will face defending EuroLeague champion Anadolu Efes in the first of the two semifinals.
Olympiacos was even down by 11 points and trailed for the vast majority of the game, retaining a steady lead only in the last minutes. With Monaco up 80-81 and four minutes to play, Kostas Sloukas scored the go-ahead basket and then assisted Moustapha Fall for the 84 – 80. After a 3-pointer by Kevin Bacon, Sloukas made a 5-0 run, draining the triple for the 89 – 83 with two minutes remaining.
Mike James answered with a deep and very difficult three under pressure and Will Thomas made the jumper for the 91 – 88, keeping Monaco alive. Tyler Dorsey through buried the triple and James had consecutive misses as the match reached its end with the Olympiacos fans jumping on the court to celebrate.
Sloukas scored 13 out of his 15 points in the fourth quarter while posting five assists and five rebounds and Dorsey finished with 16. Shaq McKissic produced 18 points and had 13 of them in the second period to keep the Reds’ head above the water in a stretch when Monaco was firing on all cylinders to built a double-digit advantage.
Thomas Walkup completed the winning equation for Olympiacos by scoring 17 points and taking the initiative in the third period with seven straight points that tied the game at 55. Dorsey then gave Olympiacos their first lead, 56 – 55 only for Monaco to reclaim it and preserve it until the fourth period.
Despite shooting 2-10 on 3-pointers, Mike James had one of his top overall performances in the series with 24 points plus 10 assists for only two turnovers. Even when his own shots didn’t fall in, he managed to set up his teammates with multiple opportunities.
In his first appearance in the series, Yakuba Ouattara delivered 15 points on 5-7 triples and was crucial in Monaco closing halftime up 41 – 48. Paris Lee had 14 points before being fouled out in the fourth period and Dwayne Bacon – Monaco’s Game 4 hero – scored 12 on 4-12 shots.
“Congratulations to Olympiacos,” Monaco coach Sasa Obradovic said. “They deserve to go to the Final Four, and not just because of this game. Because they have a group of people who really invest their time and patience to make this program go to the end. We are in the beginning of building something. I think we’ve started pretty good this season, I think we presented ourselves in an amazing way. We want to learn from this, especially you could see at the end of this game the guys who know how to play this game, like [Kostas] Sloukas. How they used their advantage and win the game. This is the experience we need, and it will help us think about the future. ”
Back to the Final Four
After winning the EuroLeague with Olympiacos in 2013, coach Giorgos Bartzokas will have the opportunity to repeat such a success in Belgrade.
“Congratulations to our team and the whole club for this amazing achievement,” Bartzokas said. “I would like also to express my respect to Monaco. They also deserve to go to the Final Four; it was a really tough series. We had to control our emotions during the game, but we were prepared for this – we spoke about it in the locker room before the game and again at halftime. We were sure it would be a 40-minute game. Even when we finished 7 points down in the first half with Monaco shooting 8 of 8 from long range with [Yakuba] Ouattara and [Paris] Lee, we believed we would dominate through our defense and find solutions through our offense. The players did their speaking on the court, and also thank you to our fans.”