By Eurohoops Team/ info@eurohoops.net
Olympiacos Piraeus won the top seed in the EuroLeague regular season for the first time in the history of the club after beating Bakonia 86 – 78 at home. The Reds finished with a 24-10 record and are waiting to see which team they’ll face in the quarterfinals.
This result automatically sent Fenerbahce Beko to the playoffs. Baskonia would’ve been the one to punch a postseason ticket with a win but will now have to wait for the game of Bayern Munich vs. Zalgiris Kaunas Friday (14/4) to find out of they are in the top 8.
A Zalgiris victory grants the Lithuanian side the last available playoff spot.
Sasha Vezenkov led Olympiacos with 21 points plus 10 rebounds while Kostas Papanikolaou provided 16 points (on 4-5 triples) and nine boards.
Kostas Sloukas had 13 points, six assists, and the two free throws for the 83 – 73 with a minute to play that more or less secured his team’s win, after also blocking Markus Howard. on a 3-point attempt.
As Vezenkov said after the game: “Our main goal is to go to the Final Four. We have to rest good two days, then get to hard work in order to accomplish our goals. The team is first. The team is winning, so everybody is happier. I don’t want to talk about myself. The team is the most important. We have a great chemistry, we did an amazing job but we are not done. We have to play way better than this to go to the Final Four.”
“We have to improve”
With his sights on the postseason, Olympiacos coach Giorgos Bartzokas also didn’t want to focus only on the achievement of getting the top spot, but also on the improvement that the team needs to achieve in the playoffs.
As he said: “I am feeling and we are feeling great. It is not a small accomplishment. It is the most competitive EuroLeague ever, and we end up first. We were really stable the whole season. We can have a lesson from everything. Bad performance or good performance, we have to improve. Improvement never ends. We can be a better team, we have to develop our offensive and defensive game because the playoffs are going to be really demanding.”
Howard dropped a game-high 29 points and paced the efforts of Baskonia. He drained a triple for the 80 – 73 with 2:17 remaining after Olympiacos went up 72 – 55 early in the fourth period but that was the closest Baskonia got down the stretch since the hosts responded with four unanswered points.
Rokas Giedraitis contributed 13 points plus eight rebounds to Baskonia and Darius Thompson had 11 points, eight rebounds, and six assists.
Cazoo Baskonia Vitoria-Gasteiz head coach Joan Penarroya with his team not controlling their fate and in need of a Zalgiris defeat in order to make the playoffs, couldn’t hide his disappointment: “Today we needed to play a very good game and we were not one of our better games. Congratulation to Olympiacos on clinching the first position and congratulations to my team. I think 18 wins is a good regular season. I think we played soft in the first quarter. We had a lot of problems playing well offensively. In the end, we took 17 more shots than Olympiacos, but we played with bad percentages. We did not play well.”