By Eurohoops team/ info@eurohoops.net
As he said at the end of the game speaking about Giorgos Printezis, Nikola Milutinov, Dimitris Agravanis and Kim Tillie missing the contest: “I think that the most important was that we kept fighting all game and in the end when we used a small lineup, we played with a really great motivation. We got rebounds, a lot of offensive rebounds, and we saw that we wanted the game more and in the end, we won the game. One more time I want to say that no matter how many absences from injuries we have, we fight and this is what all the players did. Congratulations to the players; this win belongs to the players.”
CSKA Moscow‘s Dimitris Itoudis admitted that the Greeks deserved the win: “Congratulations to Olympiacos. They won the game. They believed more in the game. They were very active on the boards. Of course, the game was close; we had our leads, they had their leads. And it was decided by a lot of details for sure. One detail was the offensive boards and the sequence over there with like 6 offensive boards and second chances. Four offensive boards, 3 offensive boards. It gave them a lot of confidence in getting the ball and setting up another play and this hurts a lot. The other part was that their key and clutch players went to their good side and defensively we did not contain that. We will become better at that.”
Jamel McLean who had his best game yet for Olympiacos with 25 points and 12 rebounds added: “We lost one in Bamberg and we knew we had to protect our home court with a very tough CSKA team. We were just locked in and it was a helluva match. Both teams played hard. We showed a lot of heart. It was just a great game to play in and I’m sure it was a great game to watch for everybody.”