Although Panathinaikos won against PAOK in the first Basket League OPAP semifinal, Fragkiskos Alvertis was not satisfied by the way his team performed, especially in defense.
"I want to congratulate coach Soulis Markopoulos for the way his team performed. What I want to say about us is that a game begins at the tip off and ends after 40 minutes. You are obliged to be focused in defense and offense. We lacked focus especially in defense, where we made a lot of mistakes. When a game runs from your fingers, it's not easy to balance it again. We have to comprehend the lesson given to us today and not to repeat the same mistakes in the next game. The important games are here for us. We have a tough road to walk".
Loukas Mavrokefalidis (player, Panathinaikos) stated: "First of all I want to congratulate PAOK for the excellent work they did. We stepped into the game without focus. We are a defensive team and our problem was right there. PAOK make everything difficult for us. Fortunately at the end we had the focus we needed to have in order to win this crucial game".
When asked about his own great performance, Mavrokefalidis didn't have many things to say: "I was in a good day. The team played for me. My job is to help the team. A personal effort is not important. The team effort counts".
Soulis Markopoulos (coach, PAOK), stated: "Congratulations to Panathinaikos for the victory and to Mavrokefalidis for his excellent job. We couldn't stop him. Panathinaikos had high percentages inside the paint. If before the game somebody told us that we would play like this against this team, probably we wouldn't believe it ourselves! We played well, we had confidence, we passed the ball. Our tall guys got early into foul trouble. We had the chance to get the win. We wouldn't advance anyway to the finals, but one victory would mean that we would have two games in our home court. Chances like this don't come around every day against teams like Panathinaikos. We took advantage of Panathinaikos' weaknesses and they didn't took advantage of ours as it usually happens. Now, it's difficult to achieve something positive".
Giorgos Dedas (player, PAOK), stated: "Getting ready for the game we wanted to puzzle a better team, like Panathinaikos. Our offense worked well. In our defense we used some tricks, giving Panathinaikos second chances. We have to review everything heading to Thursday's game. We have only one day to prepare. We have to improve our defense and some other parts of the game. We have to improve our defense and not to let them shoot so many long distance shots. And we have to be more careful with foul trouble".
