By Javier Molero Cardena/ info@eurohoops.net
Baskonia managed to get two wins after losing six straight games, and after beating Efes, Igor Kokoskov congratulated them for that.
On the other hand, he didn’t hide his feelings about his team’s performance.
As the Anadolu Efes coach said: “First of all, I’d like to congratulate Baskonia on their victory. They were much better than us today. They played much more physical, tougher, and more up-tempo than us. They were very determined on the court from the jump ball on. We only had a few minutes left to respond to Baskonia’s physicality. Our opponent played with a big confidence and aggressively. When we were creating our game plan, we emphasized the importance of protecting the paint, but we didn’t do that at all today. We weren’t good in transition defense or offensive rebounding either. We also couldn’t get into the paint on offense. We couldn’t execute our game plan. Congratulations to Baskonia once again”.
For Koskokov, the issue was the physicality of his team: “We didn’t bring the physicality we wanted to the field today. We probably played harder in our last training session before the match. We knew Baskonia would play a physical game, but we didn’t bring the same physicality to the field. After taking the initial hit, we couldn’t respond appropriately. We lost the ball, didn’t make the right decisions, and deviated from our game plan. Efes is an experienced team, and a team like ours needs to make better decisions. This is what happens when you don’t bring the necessary energy to the field and make the right decisions on the court”.
The Serbian coach commented on Nick Weiler-Babb’s knee injury, which he sustained during the game:“We don’t have any information about his injury at the moment. I hope it’s not serious; our medical team is taking care of it. We will have more detailed information when we return to Istanbul.”