Panathinaikos “flies” today to Moscow in order to participate in the tournament “Alexander Gomelsky”, along with CSKA, Triumph, Lietuvos Rytas. Mike Batiste (back injury) and Sarunas Jasikevicius (follows his personal training program) stayed in Athens. The “greens” travelled with 12 players: Milenko Tepic, Vassilis Spanoulis, Stratos Perperoglou, Antonis Fotsis, Drew Nicholas, Kostas Tsartsaris, Dimitris Diamantidis, Nikola Pekovic, Nick Calathes, Dimitris Verginis, Giorgi Shermadini, Yorgos Bogris.
Zeljko Obradovic, coach of the team, stated before getting on the plane: “We are heading to Moscow in order to play two strong preparation games, totally different to the ones we have already played in Serbia. The level will be higher, the games tougher, the teams we are going to face will have more quality. A very big difference for us will be that we’ll have with us the players that were present in Eurobasket 2009. I want to see my players to do during the game the things that we did during practices and I expect to see a lot of mistakes, because they are going to lead us to the things that we have to pay more attention”.
Vassilis Spanoulis, quoted: “We are back with the team, with different goals and different things to what we had in our minds, while working with the national team of Greece. There is a lot of work to be done. The season is expected to be long and difficult. What we must do now is to help the three new players of the team, Tepic, Calathes and Bogris to integrate as quickly as possible. The two games in Moscow are two strong games, that we’ll help us estimate our current situation”.
Panathinaikos is facing tomorrow (2/10) Triumph at 17.00, while CSKA Moscow will play Lietuvos Rytas (19.30).
