Panathinaikos is heading back to Athens late this afternoon from Serbia, after the game against Partizan in Beogradska Arena. The final result kept the greens in the first place of their group and they only need to get the win against Unicaja Malaga next Wednesday in OAKA, in order to take the home court advantage for Euroleague play-offs.
Mike Batiste wants to see his team performing better that it did against Partizan, but also a sell out crowd in a crucial game for the competition. He also expects to see his team playing much better offensively. Panathinaikos is shooting 61% in 2points shots and 45% in behind the arc in Top16, but on Thursday the numbers were 31,4% and 21,7% respectively, with only six players making the scoring list.
“We really played bad offensively. I can’t really remember a time in my years that we played so bad offensively. Defensively I think we really played good. We allowed them 26 point at halftime and overall 63 points. This is what they scored in OAKA when we played them and you play them in OAKA we had 81 points, but today we missed a lot a lot of easy shots. If we combine all the easy shots from me, to Drew, to Kecman, to Hatzivrettas, to Saras it’s very-very bad percentage. We did have second thoughts to make a shot, to go to the basket. Sometime we call a play and somebody will go on a different page. If we say that we have to do certain things, we all have to follow the orders Diamantidis, Spanoulis or Saras give up. There were five - six plays that we did differently. These situations kind of cost you when you look at the overall score and everything. The good thing is that we still hold the advantage, next week we play at home, in front of our fans and this is good for us to take the advantage to the next round. We have to move on. We still have the luck in our hands. We play at home, hopefully it will be a sell out crowd and we are going to get in and play hard and take the first position for the next round”.
* The next game for Panathinaikos is for the Greek League, playing on Sunday (8/3, 17.00) against Egaleo.
