Ever improving, offering quite a few show-time moments, in efforts to run the open field, Panathinaikos snatch the win across from Panionios at the indoor OAKA stadium by 102-84 final game score.
Zeljko Obradovic saw his boys fight for the win straight after tip-off whilst at the same time trying to achieve great performance run and get to crowd applauding plays. Antonis Fotsis and Dimitris Diamantidis were the players with the leading role in quite a few of these moments as Nikola Pekovic made sure to convert whichever pass he caught in the paint into buckets. Noteworthy element is that three clover players came off first 20 minutes game time with an index rating higher than 1.0 (Fotsis, Spanoulis, Peko).
Panathinaikos started out as the better opponent on court (4-0, 0’50’’), went to 19-14 (4’50’’) before Panionios evened things out at 5’50’’ (19-19). It was the last time rivals saw eye to eye. The greens had first say in matters on the floor, ultimately managing to contain their rivals at a steady distance. The home-team’s advantage touched double digits for the first time at 12’50’’ (38-26) off a triple by Milenko Tepic and flew on to +14, 1st half’s largest distance nailed twice, both times through the hand of Vassilis Spanoulis (51-37 at 18’10’’, 53-39 at 20’).
Panathinaikos remained the clash’s dominator as it managed to get up even by 19 points in the third quarter (58-39, 22’40’’) praise to a pair of free-throws behind Nikola Pekovic, only for Sarunas Jasikevicius to up the ante up to +20 next (79-59, 31’35’’), Nick Calathes adding even further to +22 at 35’40’’ (91-69, 35’40’’). Panionios tried to fight back but all it accounted to was to slightly close the gap, game coming to its conclusion behind final score 102-84 marked by a Stratos Perperoglou trifecta.
Referees: Voreadis, Afentoulidis, Georgiadis
Quarters: 33-23, 53-39, 73-59, 102-84
Panathinaikos (Obradovic): Tepic 12, Spanoulis 11, Perperoglou 5, Batiste 7, Fotsis 15, Nicholas 6, Tsartsaris 2, Diamantidis 5 (6as), Pekovic 17, Calathes 11, Jasikevicius 11 (7as)
Panionios (Markovic): Rice 19, Yannopoulos 7, Papanikolaou 9, Borovnjak 3, Charitopoulos 8, Kanonidis 3, Jankovic 9, Erceg 5, Athinaiou 10, Paragios 3
*Marcus Haislip (injured- hematoma in the left knee), Dimitris Verginis and Georgi Shermadini (no contract in the Greek League) were not on the official line-up.
