Panathinaikos made its first miss for the Greek Cup since 2005 as final score at the indoor stadium of Elliniko 68-64 left it with the finalist’s title across from Olympiakos. It remains nevertheless on the top of the respective list tallying 12 trophies up to date.
Olympiakos score first in the clash, Panathinaikos however took the reigns first in the matchup, pacing the game to its convenience, getting solutions to face the according to the draw home-team, also accumulating buckets off second attempts of their own, mostly through offensive boards. 2-0, 1’30’’ score rapidly switched to 4-9 and then proceeded own to 6-11 (7’) and 8-13 (8’20’’), just before the quarter ended at 15-18. The scenery seemed to change in second quarter. A partial 13-4 from 14’25’’ (22-25) up to 19’25’’ (35-29) arose Olympiakos as the pole positioned team as it went for a ever growing cushion all the way up to 6 points a margin (35-29 at 19’25’’ and 37-31 at 19’54’’). Main headache for Panathinaikos was Mike Batiste’s fouling trouble, seeing he had already reached 3 personals. It was 20 minutes of a game that marked 7 ties threw its duration.
Panathinaikos managed to pick up the slack, game recommencing(37-35, 22’10’’) only for Nikola Pekovic’s 3rd foul to be charged (22’20’’). The greens failed to contain in their comeback. They trailed at 27’15’’ by 10 (48-38), Marcus Haislip scoring next to stop the bleeding in the paint (48-42, 29’20’’), 3rd quarter resting at 50-42. The gap re-established itself at double digits (52-42, 30’25’’). Haislip and Perperoglou shared buckets to close the gap down to 5 (52-47, 33’), Pekovic having reached 4 fouls. Three triples scored on the clover by Penn, Teodosic and Kleiza got it trailing again by 11 (61-50, 36’20’’). The greens denied to let the encounter go and fought all the way down the stretch into the clutch keeping their rivals edgy as they scored to 63-59 (39’05’’) and later to 64-61 (39’45’’) before final score 68-64.
Referee: Voreadis, Mouzakis, Gontas
Quarters: 15-18, 37-31, 50-42, 68-64
Olympiakos (Yannakis): Papaloukas 3, Penn 7, Childress 7, Vujcic 4, Teodocis 22, Bourousis 8, Halperin, Kleiza 12, Mavrokefalidis 2, Vassilopoulos, Schortsanitis 3
Panathinaikos (Obradovic): Tepic, Spanoulis 4 (4as), Perperoglou 6, Batiste 10 (10rbs) Fotsis 2, Haislip 6, Nicholas 10, Diamantidis 12 (5as), Pekovic 12, Jasikevicius 2
