OT win for the Reds against Real, as the Greens go down
Olympiakos remained on top of the Euroleague with an overtime home win over Real Madrid, while Panathinaikos succumbed to a Zalgiris coached by its former star, Sarunas Jasikevicius.
The Reds triumphed 92-83 in 45 minutes on Friday, for their ninth win in 11 games.
The game at the Peace and Friendship Stadium went to overtime even though seven minutes from the end Olympiakos had led by 13 (64-51).
Giorgos Printezis actually had the chance to end the game four seconds from the end of regulation, but missed both free throws at 72-72. However he got his revenge in overtime when he scored seven consecutive points to turn a 77-79 deficit into an 84-79 advantage that had Real unable to respond.
Real relied on just two players, Luka Doncic and Jaycee Carroll (with 33 and 24 points respectively), but Olympiakos had Printezis score nine points in overtime from his 21 on the night to win it for the Reds. He was seconded by Janis Strelnieks (15 points) and Costas Papanikolaou (14).
Panathinaikos saw its winning streak snapped at Kaunas, as Zalgiris beat the Greek champion 80-74 on Thursday.
The Athens team produced a display reminiscent of its bad losses at Barcelona and CSKA this fall, as after a good first third of the game when it led by up to 12 points (22-10) its defense crumbled, allowing the Lithuanians to advance by 17 at the end of a disastrous third quarter for the Greeks (64-47).
In the last period Panathinaikos threatened to turn things around again cutting the distance to five (72-67) through a few successful triples, but with 11/31 outside the 6.75-meter line and 17/30 free throws on the night it could not get anything better than a rather narrow loss.
Panathinaikos, that had Nikos Pappas score 16 points and Chris Singleton another 15, is now on a 7-4 record.
AEK sacked coach Sotiris Manolopoulos after its Basketball Champions League loss to Bayreuth with an 80-73 score. Aris lost 69-67 at Oostende but PAOK beat visiting Ventspils 83-76.
