By Cesare Milanti / info@eurohoops.net
BERLIN, Germany – For the fifth time in his coaching career, Sarunas Jasikevicius won’t celebrate the title in the EuroLeague Final Four, as this year Panathinaikos had the better of Fenerbahce in the semifinal.
In the post-game press conference, the Lithuanian coach praised their opponents and his players. “They were more themselves than we were. Huge respect. now that the season is finished in the EuroLeague, big thank you to our players, they really pulled out games and situations which were extremely difficult to pull out and got us to the Final Four”, he commented.
“It’s a tough one, there’s no questions: we need to get up from this. We’ll try to repeat. Big gratitude to our players to bring Fenerbahce to get to the highest stage. No questions this one will hurt, but you gotta get up. No other way”, he also said.
Later on, he touched on what the yellow-and-blue team missed. “If you look at the game, defensively we were really good. We were fine, even giving up too many easy points. We managed to keep Panathinaikos under their numbers. Offensively, unfortunately, we were horrible. We didn’t move the ball, when we did it and found solution we didn’t make the shots”, Sarunas Jasikevicius continued.
Despite training against Panathinaikos’ adjustments, they still couldn’t pull it off. “Our offense against switch all defense that we practice everyday was also not there. Basically too static. When the situation gets tough, we tried to do things in our own way”, he analyzed.
Watch the full Panathinaikos-Fenerbahce press conference:
PHOTO CREDIT: Eurokinissi