Panathinaikos overcame the obstacle of Panellinios prevailing by 75-63 in a road game at the indoor stadium of Kypseli for day 15 in the Greek League.
Panathinaikos held the superlative in the clash for the greatest part of the 1st half, a fact that presented it with the advantage marked on the score-board. It came off tip-off as the better opponent (0-4 at 2’ and 3-8 at 3’10’’) however, as was expected, the home-team answered with a partial 5-0 run of its own that led to 10-8, minute 6 score. The greens counteracted every defense from Panellinios, let it be man-to-man or zone defense, on many occasions got to unguarded shots not making the basket though most of the time. Ilias Zouros’s team’s main element was feisty defense, with efforts to put pressure on every part of the game. Zeljko Obradovic though got his boys input respective pressure, get to more boards than their rivals and mess up the home-team’s creativity, confining them to only a couple of assists in the entire first half. Accordingly, in frontcourt, patience in offense paid off profitably as the score flexed from 14-17 (10’) to 17-30 (16’). Alas the greens were unable to ultimately contain their hosts. They allowed them to get some long range, Panellinios exploited the privilege and the result showed up on the score board, as it managed to cut its trail down to 5 (29-34 at 18’20’’), slightly before intermission went into session at 29-36 standings.
Home-team force held strong in the second half, main weapon in offense was beyond the arc scoring, a factor that kept it alive in the matchup. Panathinaikos’s greatest assumed advantage was a 9 point cushion, distance which remained active all the way down the stretch to third quarter inning, Billy Spanoulis sinking a bucket to 50-59. The aforementioned guard shared attempts with Marcus Haislip to break open scoring in the fourth quarter, cruising the clover to +16 (52-68 at 35’40’’). The pace was under green command as it gradually went up even by 18 points behind an attempt from Drew Nicholas (53-71, 36’) as the game came into the clutch, final score 75-63, Panathinaikos game.
Referees: Mouzakis, Koromilas, Mitsopoulos
Quarters: 14-17, 29-36, 50-59, 63-75
Panellinios (Zouros): Xanthopoulos, Papamakarios 6, Charalampidis 12, Kalaitzis, Jhonsen 2, Ostoic 2, Petroulas, Georgalis 4, Blakney 21, Davis 10, Vougioukas 6
Panathinaikos (Obradovic): Tepic, Spanoulis 11, Perperoglou 10, Batiste 10, Fotsis 7, Haislip 8, Nicholas 10, Diamantidis 5, Pekovic 14, Calathes
*Sarunas Jasikevicus, Kostas Tsartsaris and Yorgos Bogris attended the encounter sidelined.
*Thanasis and Kostas Yannakopoulos were present in the stadium.
*Nick Calathes was the birthday boy of the evening, celebrating his 21st return (7/2/1989).
*More than 500 Panathinaikos fans came to support their team cheering and chanting from warm-up all the way down to the final buzzer.
