Bartzokas: “We struggle because of our pressure”

MOSCOW, RUSSIA - MARCH 08: Georgios Bartzokas, Head Coach of Khimki Moscow Region in action during the 2017/2018 Turkish Airlines EuroLeague Regular Season Round 25 game between Khimki Moscow Region and AX Armani Exchange Olimpia Milan at Arena Mytishchi on March 8, 2018 in Moscow, Russia. (Photo by Mikhail Serbin/EB via Getty Images)

By Eurohoops Team / info@eurohoops.net

AX Armani Exchange Olimpia Milan defeated Khimki Moscow region on the road and after the game, coach Georgios Barztokas wasn’t happy at all with his team’s performance, stating that the next fives games will show if the Russian side can make the playoffs.

Coach Bartzokas stated that Khimki did not deserve to win, stating that this is the Turkish Airlines EuroLeague and anything can happen: “I cannot say what happened today was unexpected. We expected Milano to play with pressure. They have offensive talent. They can beat any team in Europe if they play like they did tonight. We need to approach the game a completely different way, thinking about defense, playing without pressure. We said that these are must-win games but we struggle because of our pressure. It is obvious. We missed more than 10 lay-ups under the basket with no pressure, we made silly fouls when they had the bonus. In this kind of games, if you miss a lot of lay-ups, if you don’t foul you allow players like Jerrels and Goudelock open shots, you don’t deserve to win.”

He also stated that the team’s chemistry looks broken: “We have five more games to go, we have to win as many wins as we can, to see if we can make the playoffs. This is the EuroLeague, whenever you are not ready, whenever you have problems with missing players (ed.note: Honeycutt and Zuvkov) you face problems. Thomas Robinson came back and our chemistry looks broken. It is important to not change our approach, we just have to take it game by game and one step at a time. It’s my responsibility right now to go until the end with the players that can execute our plan.”

On the other hand, Coach Simeone Pianigiani commented on the team victory. “We played a solid game. My players deserved this victory. We led throughout this game. Of course, Khimki is a team with good players, we saw it in the last quarter when they stayed in the game, we missed some lay-ups but we still stayed mentally strong in defense and I think we deserved this victory. We show that we want to be better and our work. We continue to play strong until the end of the season to show that we can compete with everyone.”

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