Panathinaikos takes no chances against underdog in cup final
Panathinaikos took no chances in yesterday’s Greek Cup basketball final, in which it thrashed AGO Rethymnon, the competition’s surprise team from the lower-tier A2 division, with an 87-48 score. It was Panathinaikos’s third Greek Cup win in a row. Panathinaikos narrowly missed out on breaking the cup final’s biggest ever winning margin of 40 points set by Aris against Panellionios in 1987. Fragiskos Alvertis, Panathinaikos’s captain, equaled the Greek Cup’s record for the most Greek Cup final appearances. Yesterday’s appearance, Alvertis’s eighth, equaled the record held by old Aris legends Nikos Gallis and Panayiotis Yiannakis. Panathinaikos’s Costas Tsartsaris won a second successive MVP award for the final. Rethymnon’s unanticipated run all the way to yesterday’s cup final did add zest to the competition. But the Cretan lower-league team went into the match against Panathinaikos, the top league’s front-runner and a hot contender for this season’s Euroleague title, knowing that the affair was more or less a foregone conclusion. This was highlighted early in the game, soon after Tsartsaris opened the scoring for Panathinaikos with a two-point shot. Then, when Rethymnon’s Yiannis Kyriakopoulos responded with a three-pointer to put the Cretan underdogs ahead 3-2, the team’s coach Stergios Koufos signaled to the referees, calling for the game’s end. Rethymnon managed to keep up with Panathinaikos for the first quarter of play. The finalists were tied at 18-18 in the eighth minute of play, but from that point on Panathinaikos launched its winning course. Despite the final’s casual atmosphere, some Panathinaikos fans did manage to generate some unrest when they engaged in mild scuffling with the other team’s fans.
