Two out of three in Euroleague this week
The week seemed perfect for Greek teams in the Euroleague up to the last few seconds of Olympiakos’ game at Zalgiris, when the Reds blew the game they should have won, after also winning at Villeurbanne on Tuesday. Panathinaikos did what it had to do against bottom team Khimki in Athens.
In France Olympiakos avenged its home loss to Villeurbanne beating its host in overtime with a 101-93 score.
The Reds led early on, but were lucky to have Kostas Sloukas take them to overtime (86-86 after regulation), where the Greek team was far better than the French. Sloukas and Shaquielle McKissic scored 23 points apiece.
Then on Friday Olympiakos visited Zalgiris Kaunas, and managed to throw away a seven-point lead two minutes from the end to lose 81-79.
In a tight game in Lithuania Olympiakos edged ahead 79-72, but conceded nine unanswered points in the end, with Thomas Walkup stealing the ball from Sloukas (possibly fouling him in the process) in the last offense of the Reds to score the winning basket himself.
Sloukas and Giorgos Printezis made 16 points each for Olympiakos that is now on an 11-10 record.
In between those games Panathinaikos saw off visiting Khimki 94-78 on Thursday.
Despite the absence of Ioannis Papapetrou and Giorgos Papagiannis, the Greek champion overwhelmed the Russians, mainly thanks to a spectacular Dinos Mitroglou (29 points, 12 rebounds) and Nemanja Nedovic (21 points, five assists).
In this first Euroleague win of Panathinaikos with Oded Kattash on its bench, the host collected 40 rebounds (against Khimki’s 23) of which the 21 were offensive ones.
This was the Greens’s seventh win in 20 games as they have now climbed to 14th among 18 teams.
