By Eurohoops team/ info@eurohoops.net
Baskonia head coach Pedro Martinez explained that his players have to put on the floor a near-perfect performance in Game 3 of the EuroLeague quarterfinals against defending champion Fenerbahce, Tuesday (24/4) if they want to prevent the sweep.
“Fenerbahce is a great team that forces us to play a very good game and provides us with a very good individual and collective match for us to be competitive. We can’t play a normal game, we can’t play badly. We need to have a complete game, “ Martinez said in his pre-game comments. “We have the opportunity tomorrow to have this game and we have to look for it. I know it’s hard to say when you are 0 – 2 but I see that the team is doing well. I seem that my players have a good mentality, concentration and doing things in a certain direction, which I think is good. I would like to say this with the series tied but I say that now because I think we are doing things in the right direction. But you have to do it a little better. You can’t think ‘how good they are’. They (Fenerbahce) are good, but so are we.”
The Basques are down 0 – 2 and need all hands on deck for survival. Thus guard Jayson Granger is expected to make his debut in the series, after missing the first two games due to an ankle injury, even though he’s not exactly 100% ready.
“He (Granger) has been away for two weeks. Without training or playing and without living the team’s day-to-day life. At least during the days we’ve been in Turkey. He hasn’t seen how we prepared for these games and how we’ve done some things. Although we wanted to explain yesterday and today. He’s not in an excellent condition to play tomorrow but we think that we need all the players. If Jayson can help us, he’s welcome to do so. We don’t want to wait until everything is perfect and he’s 100% ready to play. We have to risk a little and make him play earlier. Obviously, he’s not in rhythm and he’s a little worse than the rest. But it’s very good news that he’s ready to play. Now we’ll see if he does.”