Olympiakos thrashes its Turkish visitor
Irresistible Olympiakos thrashed Anadolu Efes in Piraeus on Thursday with a 75-53 score to go second in its Euroleague group.
Even if the Turkish club had not played its worst game in the Euroleague this season, it would still have been unable to defeat this well-organized and often impressive Olympiakos, that confirmed that it is getting better by the week.
Led by last weekend’s Most Valuable Player in the Greek league, Costas Papanikolaou, scorer of 17 points on Thursday, the Reds shook off an early Efes lead to advance by nine points at half-time (35-26) and never look back.
Although new signing Josh Powell is yet to gear up to the rest of the team, the Greek players of coach Giorgos Bartzokas have more than made up for the American, with Vassilis Spanoulis scoring 14 points, Giorgos Printezis scoring eight plus collecting seven rebounds, and Stratos Perperoglou notching up nine points.
The only redeeming feature for Efes was that it managed to obtain a better head-to-head record with Olympiakos, as the Turks had won by 26 points in Istanbul.
The reigning European champion will now fight it out with Zalgiris at Kaunas for the top spot in the group.
